Bonding
by geophf
Summary: What happens when the bugs turn on each other? The right answer is to let the bugs kill each other off, then you clean up what's left. The wrong answer is to throw yourself into the middle of the fray. Guess which one Corporal Torres picked?
1. Planetfall

An arc burned itself across the sky. Sensor drones followed the object as it fell from orbit and tracked it to a densely forested area. The object fell into a very lightly populated area, so there was no alarm raised.

Spectrometric analysis indicated titanium alloy. One of our ships coming home, then! But profiles matched nothing in the last century or two. If there were anyone alive aboard that ship – the probability of which being far below the realm of possibility – they would receive quite the surprise if any contact was made in the next decade or two. But, then again, that possibility was slim: humanity was defined now by the Families that ruled the nation-states, the legions that served them, and the billion-odd survivors trying to scratch a basic subsistence from the desolation in which they squatted. A billion-odd survivors with no say in the new world order and no hope, unless they were elevated to the servant class, still with no say, but at least they would be fed and clothed and sheltered, and even allowed to participate as productive citizens. Servants? Slaves? At least they weren't human waste.

Earth was now empty and barren: not a desert, just wilderness. The human population was hit by diseases, finishing off in heavily populated areas what wars had decimated.

And the lightly populated areas? You took your chances, living in the bad-lands. One of most dangerous killers of men was other men.

But what of space? People escaped to other stellar systems in the galaxy, but space was a cold, lonely place. Ships went out, but they never came back.

That is to say, most of them never did.

Except this one. Its mass was way too small for a human colony ship, so ... science vessel? With technology hundreds of years old? What possible impact, besides one tiny, little crater on the Earth – invisible from space – would this vessel have?

An ancient hulk returning to a home where nobody cared. Why worry about a spaceship when there were enough worries just scratching out a living here on good, old, tired Earth.

...

She ran.

 _This_ was her purpose, this is what she was meant to do! Her very being sang: _run!_

So she ran.

The wind whistled past her flanks, thirty, no, forty, no, _fifty_ kilometers per hour, and the low-hanging branches and leaves whipped passed her cranial exo-armor, but did not touch _her!_

And the sticks and water _snapped_ and _splashed_ under her talons.

And she felt it all, and _gloried_ in it, but let none of it touch her _self._

She is the fourth of only four of her kind, four to survive this planetfall. She was alive, and free, and this whole measly little backwater planet was _hers_ for the taking.

And take it, she would.

That is, if she didn't have her cursed, superior, overbearing, overcautious, over-worrying ... _ninnies_ of sisters-not-sisters that she would gladly rip apart with just one more sly check from them.

 _'Runt.'  
_ _'Child.'  
_ _'Little one.'_

The teasing she suffered from her elders, just because she was ship-born and hadn't seen any real combat, and had lost every fight with her sisters-not-sisters, every single fight, just because she was smaller and slower and much, much less experienced ...

She swore to herself. She would show the other two. She would ... _do_ something on this planet, and please the Queen, and her sisters would have to grovel before her, and _then_ would she lord it over them, would she?

Oh, yes! Yes, she would!

At just over two meters, and more than a year old, she was a fully mature worker/warrior of the hive – what was left of it – and there were _hosts_ , _living hosts,_ on that cramped little vessel that could in no way support a full hive, but could incubate one, oh, yes, if only the Queen would let her do _something, anything,_ but would her queen allow her?

No.

She was ready to gnaw her own arm off in frustration! They had been on this planet for _days_ under this bright yellow star with a thick, rich nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, but had they struck out, and killed, and taken new hosts?

No.

So, instead of punching holes in bulkheads, she ran. Sixty kilometers per hour now, channelling her fury and impatience into a mere fraction of effort of her hind legs as the forest blurred past her, as she could not see it, for she did not have eyes to see, ...

... as the hosts did.

Useless things: eyes. You cut off power in their vessel, and the hosts were so easily corralled and slaughtered.

Or so she liked to think. With solid exo-armor skeletal plating, and a circulatory acid that could burn a hole through the outer hull of their puny interstellar vessels, there was no being in the galaxy that was a match for her.

What did the hosts have to their credit, besides lots of meat to incubate larval forms? Nothing! Eyes: useless. Large frontal lobs that housed soft, fatty tissue that served no purpose (it was called 'brain'), and an internal skeletal structure that was as brittle and delicate. You touch them, they break, you move into their ocular range, they scream, some of them simply die, just from that, you drop them more than a couple meters, they make a wet mess on the deck plating.

It's like they were bred to be raw material for the hive.

Speaking of which: did they ever breed!

Can you imagine? They had only two sexes with an equal distribution of females to males! They formed small breeding units! How was that even genetically possible? What was the point of having more than one breeding male in a hive?

Not only that, but they breed all the time! Like: all the time, not just once in the male's lifetime (because, of course, the queen eats the male to sustain her egg-production). It was simply staggering to her that they ate, excreted and bred every single cycle! How could a planet full of that species maintain itself for more than an age?

It seemed counterproductive, but these hosts were engineered differently than what sense dictated, it seemed to her.

The Hive had one Queen, one male which the Queen ate as soon as it mated with her, a host of warrior/workers. The hive made sense. The hosts as incubators made sense.

But the Queen ... what the Queen was doing with the surviving hosts ...

She ran even faster in her fury, and dared not even think on the insanity of what she saw her Queen doing. She couldn't: it was genetically impossible to call into question anything the Queen said or did or desired. It was genetically impossible for a worker/warrior to even think the thought _'insanity'_ or even to consider the word _regicide._

So she ran, establishing an ever expanding perimeter around the ship, assessing every gully and outcropping, ignoring the harmless local fauna, both prey and predator, that ran to the safety of hiding (they thought) of her approach. Her razor-sharp senses told her everything of her surroundings, her genetically-crafted hunting skills made her nearly invisible to any and all she approached, ... until it was just too late.

She had been given particular orders _not_ to engage with any hosts she might find. She found none.

Lucky for them.

She was in a rotten mood, spoiling for a fight, spoiling to kill, but this patrol was a bust. There was nothing and more nothing.

 _Stupid, harmless planet!_ she thought, letting the bile of her hatred poison her thoughts.

Well, this planet was ... mostly harmless.

Or, ... not so much.

She finished up the last leg of her perimeter-check and headed back to the ship at a full clip. A scolding from her elders would be just such a wonderful way to end this cycle! She had spent an excessive amount of time on patrol, and she was going to get it.

Nothing for it.

"Fucking planet!" she hissed to herself as she approached the ship's hull. If she could, she would take out all her anger and frustration on this tiny, little dirtball and make every one of its inhabitants suffer an extremely agonizing death for how she felt right now.

If she could.

Second was waiting for her at the entrance, of course.

"Fuck," she hissed into the ground, head bowed in submission to her superior.

But her blood was boiling in an acid-fueled rage.

She needed to kill something. She really needed to kill something.

'One of most dangerous killers of men was other men'?

That was true, right up until planetfall.

Planet Earth had no idea what had come to it in this ancient hulk of a spaceship.

The aliens had arrived, but they did not come in peace. Not at all.


	2. Nothing

"You're late!" Second snarled at the runt.

The tail of 'littlest' of the hive twitched in annoyance. "I know," she snarled back, unrepentant.

"Find anything of note on patrol?" Second overlooked the insubordination. She was, herself, more serious in nature, and was careful in choosing which battles to fight.

"I think there was a tree out there somewhere!" the little one exclaimed, her voice layered in sarcastic delight.

"What?" Second demanded. "There are trees everywhere! It's a fucking forest, you fucking idiot!"

"Oh, really?" the runt bristled. "I wouldn't have known if you hadn't've told me! Thank you, Second, for your wise words of wisdom! I will ponder these sage ..."

"Shut. up." Second snarled, her patience with this runt at an end. "So, nothing. No sign of hosts?"

The little one's tail twitched at this question. _Finally!_ she thought and her body shook with anticipation. "No," she said excitedly, "nothing for twenty klicks, but if I could extend my search further then ..."

"No," Second's voice rang with finality.

"No, Second, listen," the young one pleaded, "I could go out with you on your patrol now, see? And I could go straight out, reconnoiter, come right back and ..."

"No," Second repeated.

"But ..."

"NO!" Second screamed.

Both were breathing heavily. Second was snarling softly, just daring the runt to make a move, any move, to disobey her order.

After the standoff where the runt did not leap into an attack, Second, controlling her fury, growled quietly: "This is your rest cycle. You will go to your cowl, and you will rest. _I_ will go on patrol, and I will _patrol._ So the Queen has commanded, so we obey." Second paused. "Or do you question the Queen's dictates now, baby worker?"

The little one sized Second up.

Second was no worker. She was the Queen's personal guard, and at four meters, tip-to-tail, easily four times her own mass, she would do nothing more than scratch her superior before she was put down as any mad worker would be: instantly.

"No," she spat quietly.

"Good," Second hissed, "then go do that."

And with that, Second crouched, power coiled tight in all four of her limbs, and then she leapt from the ship's hatch.

The runt observed Second's departure. The little one was as fast as a cheetah, but next to Second's raw power, her top speed was a snail's pace. And the grace at which Second rocketed from the ship, then lanced away...

Every move of Second's was refined to be absolutely directed to her purpose, she was lethal, and she was beautiful.

The runt turned from the hatch, hating herself for being cowed by all this raw power, and slunk back toward the mess deck, repurposed to house the seat of the new hive.

...

"How went the patrol, little one? Find anything?" a friendly voice greeted the runt as she entered the mess deck.

One Arm, as she was called, guarded the entrance to the kitchenette. She had lost her right forelimb from enemy fire taking this ship from the hosts. Apparently their warrior class wasn't all that easy to overrun.

Could have fooled the runt. _If I were there in that battle, ..._ she thought bitterly, wishing she had battle scars like One Arm and Second to distinguish themselves, but no, the only scratches she had received were bite- and claw-marks from fighting with her sisters, and all of those were superficial wounds at that.

Her perfect physique was an embarrassment to her.

And on top of that, even if One Arm had a key weakness, not on her right side, no, the runt learned that lesson the hard way, but on her left, where One Arm's sole fully-functioning claw could not twist around backward to counter-strike, even with that weakness, the runt had yet to prevail against her much older sister. Much older and a much more cunning fighter.

One Arm would lead you right into where you thought you had an advantage, and then she would turn the tables on you so fast your head wouldn't have time to spin before you were subdued, or dead.

The runt wished she was there, in combat, to see that in action, and really learn how to fight, and not just have these minor scuffles, play for her elders, and learn nothing except how to look like a fool.

The runt just grunted a negative reply, too dejected to relate she found nothing on patrol.

Again.

Anger again flooded her senses. "No, found nothing... but we do have two hosts right here, ... we can use them, can't we?"

Suddenly One Arm's friendly demeanor just evaporated. "We are using them, little one," she said very seriously. "We are using them exactly as the Queen commands."

The Queen, in the exact center of the mess deck, was utterly still, saying nothing. Neither worker looked toward her. If she called, they would answer. Instantly. If she didn't, they dared not approach.

The runt's tail swished angrily. "They are _hosts!_ and they are sitting in the side chamber, doing what? making noises at each other? Why?"

One Arm shrugged casually, but her stance did not shift, placing her in front of the door to the kitchenette. Or, to the point, between the hosts and the runt. One Arm's stance was low and protective, facing the only threat in the room. Not the hosts, but her sister, the runt.

"They are social animals," One Arm said. "They communicate, same as us."

 _"Nothing_ of them is the same as us!" the runt snarled back.

The Queen expelled a deep breath quietly.

Both workers stopped and turned toward her, but she commanded nothing, so they waited.

Nothing.

After a while, One Arm stated: "This is your sleep cycle."

The runt _tsk_ ed. "Thank you, _too,_ for the reminder!" She felt put upon. She wasn't larva! She could take care of herself without everybody telling her what she should be doing all the time!

"Well, then, get going," One Arm commanded. "I am on tending cycle. There is nothing for you to do here."

The runt spat on the deck. "Tending _hosts!"_ She didn't think there was anything more demeaning in the Universe than what was unfolding right before her.

The Queen now hissed.

They stopped.

But again, nothing from the Queen.

"Move. along." One Arm returned her attention to the run. "You don't understand, you stupid little shit, and you never will until you are bonded with your own hu-..."

The runt raised her hand. "You're right," she said. "I'll never understand."

And she turned her back on One Arm, an grave insult to a superior, indicating: _you are no threat to me,_ and climbed up to her cowl. Opening it, she curled herself up into a ball and sealed herself in, blotting out this whole, crazy, stupid world.

Sleep seized her quickly, but she uttered one final angry reproach. "This is wrong," she whispered bitterly to herself.

 _"Come,"_ the Queen whispered into the silence, but her voice penetrated even into the furthest recesses of the ship, if 'one' were so placed to hear her call.

'One' wasn't far away. 'One' was in her cowl, sleepiness stealing her alertness.

But the Queen's call instantly put her in motion. She dropped right out of her enclosure and was on all fours, low to the ground, two meters from her Queen. One Arm was right next to her.

The Queen hissed toward One Arm and motioned her head toward the kitchenette, a very clear command: _Not you. Return to your duty._

One Arm backed away from the Queen quickly and returned to her station.

The Queen returned attention to her newest, untested warrior. "What is wrong?" she asked mildly.

The runt did not know this, but this Queen was very different than other Queens throughout time. A Queen commanded, the hive obeyed. The hive was well-ordered because its Queen ordered it so. A Queen did not whisper. A Queen did not ask questions. A Queen didn't have conversation with hive workers and warriors.

But the runt did know when she was being upbraided. Called in front of the Queen? Only one reason for that.

"Nothing," she whispered to the floor.

"Nothing," the Queen repeated thoughtfully.

The runt did not reply.

"Yet," the Queen continued, "you wish to extend your patrol into this cycle, your sleep cycle. In fact, you did do that, and without permission, reporting in two minutes after this cycle began, yet having no excuses for being late as you encountered nothing on your patrol. And then you are questioning the disposition of the humans under my care now. That is their disposition. If they are to be hosts, _I_ determine that, not you. Or would you make a host of this one, too?"

At that the Queen removed her claw from her chest.

In her hand was a ... 'human.' White. So white as to be sickly white. In fact, her skin was almost translucent, ... gossamer. Her long hair was pure silver, and her eyes, now closed in sleep, were the palest of blue. She was of colonist build, which is to say: not at all, resembling more a bean pole in shape and nothing like the meat the adult female hosts in the kitchenette had.

... If you blew in her direction, she would just float away.

Well, not in the gravity well of this planet, but the comparison was not far off, no matter how many years she had been pretending to be one of the hive.

The Queen's very own ... something.

The runt didn't dare even think the word: 'pet.'

The little stick cradled in the Queen's claw shifted slightly and murmured: _"Ah?"_

The Queen smothered the girl back into her plated chest, dropping her head slightly, covering the girl completely in a protective embrace.

"'Nothing,'" the Queen said again. "This is what's troubling you?"

Runt's tail swished quickly back-and-forth, back-and-forth, but she didn't make to answer back. This, of course, did not escape the Queen's notice. Nothing did. This was not a Queen satiated with absolute power, but an astute and observant one.

Therefore, she was so much more dangerous than her predecessors, because she did not rest on her authority, nor rely on her guards, but quested out with every sense and thought, quested, then conquered.

Just as she conquered this ship.

The Queen blew out a long, slow breath. "Little one, I am patient, but you are trying my patience. You have yet to prove yourself, and you are most recalcitrant in the execution of your duties."

The Queen let this sink in.

"What is your problem, little one?" she continued. "What is this 'wrong'?"

The runt remained cowed, but her tail swished and twitched nervously.

The Queen finally asked the Question: "Whom do you serve?"

"You, my Queen," the runt answered automatically.

"Then _serve_ me," the Queen hissed. "When you are on your work cycle, you work! When you are on your tend cycle, you tend! When you are on your sle-..."

The Queen broke off. "Why is it that I must instruct you on this? I don't know what aberration caused you to be so small, but maybe it also affected your attitude? Maybe it affected your loyalty to me, hm?"

The Queen thought, observing her subject. "Maybe you want to prove yourself to me, is that it?"

"That's _all_ I want, my Queen!" the runt cried passionately.

 _"Hsst!"_ The Queen snarled.

 _"Nn-ah?"_ The little human cradled into the Queen moaned in her sleep.

They waited in silence.

The human girl remained asleep.

The Queen breathed out a huge gust of exhalant over her worker, blessing her subject with an intoxicating mixture of pheromones that reenforced loyalty and unswerving obedience.

Not that the Queen was pleased with her subject, quite the opposite, in fact.

But the Queen's displeasure did not distract her from her will.

She was, after all, the Queen of the Hive, which served entirely for her pleasure.

... displeasure. Whatever.

Yes, whatever she willed, the Hive did.

She looked down at her subject. "You prove yourself to me by doing your duty. That is all."

"Yes, my Queen," the worker replied.

But the Queen knew this was not enough. She wondered why this even mattered. It wouldn't matter to another Queen.

"I will talk with Second. If she finds something on her patrol, maybe you will be able to acquit yourself with some singular accomplishment. If not ..."

The Queen tapped her chest plating in a slow tattoo.

She continued: "If not, perhaps Second can escort you further afield so that your fruitless patrols up to now will yield something useful. But understand this, you are going _nowhere_ until I see a marked improvement in your work right here on this vessel in the next three cycles. If not, I will consign you to the nothing you say is wrong. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, my Queen," the runt replied.

The threat meant nothing to her. She knew the Queen was serious, but death came lightning quick to any disobedience. No, what got her vibrating in the core of her being was the promise of finding something, doing something, finally carving out the mark of the Hive on this stupid, little planet!

"Get out of my presence!" the Queen snarled, done with this little chat.

A 'little chat' was not on the Queen's agenda, and she was extremely put out that it was taking time away from her own sleep cycle.

The runt retreated from the Queen, clambered up to her cowl and was asleep even as she curled up into it.

...

"Newt," the Queen whispered.

"Nnn?" the little girl responded groggily.

The Queen unfolded the mostly asleep girl from her chest plating, holding her upright in her claw.

"Come along then, my little salamander!" the Queen chucked affectionately, a very strange tone to hear the Queen use, because no other creature would ever hear that tone from her.

Then, the Queen, opening her massive outer jaws, extended her inner mouth and enfulged the girl's head all the way to her neck. She pulled with her inner mouth and pushed Newt into her outer mouth, completely. All that was visible of the girl was her hands hanging out from the Queen's upper jaws and her feet hanging down below. To an outside observer it looked like the Queen had swallowed a helpless girl in one huge bite!

This would be an accurate description, except that the girl was not swallowed: she was suspended in the Queen's outer mouth, floating in viscous mucus, and her head was completely submerged in the Queen's inner mouth, which began pumping a tiny trickle of oxygen-rich slime composed mostly of protein and just a bit of pheromone into the girl's mouth, which sucked in the liquid greedily as it came, a rich soup, or cocktail, of nutrients that kept Newt fed and happy.

Really, really happy.

This maneuver was well-practiced. They had perfected it each and every day for over a year now. The little, tiny human girl and the Queen of the last Hive became one: fitting into each other perfectly.

Newt slept in the safest place on this planet: in the embrace of, and embracing, one of the most dangerous creatures in the galaxy: the Queen of the Hive, her lover.

Bonded.


	3. Noblesse Oblige

While her little human slept, the Queen mulled over the state of the Hive.

This new worker was trouble, and there was no doubt about it. The Queen could crush her into the deck plating, squash her with her claw like a hammer would crush a beetle, but then what? Then they would have to forage for a host, because the humans here were bonded now. The warriors, Second and Eighth (whom the runt knew as One Arm), were bonded, now, too, to their respective humans, just as the Queen was bonded to her human. Did it make the Queen and the bonded workers weaker?

Well, yes! Obviously!

But did it make them stronger somehow?

That remained to be seen. Obviously, this was an entirely new development for the hive, when they had to be selective with humans: bonding with them or using them as hosts. Was the Queen's decision-making clouded? She thought not. They had, after all, commandeered a ship and crashed onto the hosts' home world. What other hive had done that? What other hive had survived an encounter with these supposedly weak humans?

The Queen had observed first-hand how a hive fared against these creatures when she felt the tactical nukes take out the hive she, herself, was planning to overthrow.

More than one hundred of her sisters, atomized or blown to bits in seconds.

Well, that problem was solved. New objective: the enemy's ship.

And that object was very easily accomplished. While the bulk the humans – their warrior class – exited the ship to assess the damage they inflicted on the target hive, she and her sisters blitzed the ship's airlock when one exited to do something external. Maintenance? Who cares! The point was, the ship was theirs! When the boarding party returned, in force, forewarned and armed, it was a fierce battle, with heavy casualties on both sides, but the objective remained hers.

The ship. And three of its crew. Now: two, because the sole-surviving male was used to produce the runt.

The _recalcitrant_ runt.

But if the Queen had crushed the runt, she would be in a particularly unpleasant bind. She could not use either of the other two hosts. Were Second and Eighth loyal to the Queen? Absolutely. No question there. Even as this one here was loyal. Surly, yes, but still loyal. But if the Queen implanted Second's bonded human, she would lose Second to grief. The Queen knew this just as if she would know what losing her little Newt would do to her.

The Queen knew this because her grief would rip this local star from the sky. And even that would not be enough to assuage her. Nothing ever would.

Bonding. It was a horrible, wonderful, terrifying, ... inexplicable experience. It wasn't mating. The Queen had experienced that with a male they had procured and once was enough for a lifetime ... or more. She couldn't wait to dismember and devour that ... _thing!_ wings and all!

The bonding was something much deeper. The connection was like unto a chemical bond: two elements, so different in their chemical properties, when bonded, formed something entirely different... but something useful?

This, the Queen would have to wait to find out. Her senses were sharp – fine-tuned, in fact – but now was a waiting-time. When the time came to act, she would act decisively for the good of the hive. She knew this in her very being. If the humans, if Newt, had to be destroyed, she would have them destroyed without a second's hesitation, and if that meant the bonded workers needed to be disposed of, she would do that, too, even Second, without a second's hesitation. New workers could be produced from the eggs she had yet to generate. That wasn't a problem.

The problem was that this was a waiting-time, an in-between time, and the Queen hated this. Fighting, killing, conquering, subduing: these were in her being, just like the little runt, wanting so badly to _do_ something. But waiting ...

A hive had hundreds of workers, all spawned ready to fight, kill or capture hosts.

Her hive had been reduced from the twelve she had started with before that one little skirmish with seven humans had reduced it down to now three workers... two, actually, had survived that skirmish. And herself.

That ... could be enough to conquer a world, if prudently managed. In fact, even just one was enough to. She knew this, because she had done this herself.

Second was called 'Second' because she was the second spawned of only two.

For a time it was just First.

Her, alone on a hostile moon, hatched when a foolish human went exploring their little planetoid, ... that had never come back.

Then a new Queen. Then, just like that, more than one hundred worker/warriors from one hundred hosts captured and killed in a matter of weeks on that little moon, LV-426.

But now, just three workers, one on shaky ground, ... Was it because she was not bonded yet? The runt was unstable from day one, and only seemed to be getting more so.

If the Queen destroyed this runt, would the next one be better or worse? In a hive with one hundred workers, one, more or less, didn't make a difference. In hive of just three workers, one made all the difference, affecting the other two to a great degree.

And then there was the troubling absence in the scouting patrols of any contact with hosts whatsoever after days of patrolling an ever-expanding perimeter around the crash-site.

Thirty-one light years from LV-426 in the ζ Reticuli system to here was a long way to travel, particularly at relativistic speeds. How many years, how many centuries, had passed? Had humanity wiped itself out on its own home world? But there were populated areas! The dark side of the planet had some illuminated areas. It did.

Or were those fires, unchecked, burning across the barren planet?

What if there were no sightings of hosts because ... because there were no hosts left?

And this Hive, crashed on this planet, power cut from the ship to disable it, heavy structural damage anyway from the planet fall, ... what if they were marooned here, forever, with only three workers?

Crushing the runt would be mildly satisfying, but an imprudent course of action for the Queen to take with so many unknowns at present.

So the Queen could wait.

She hated waiting, but she had to.

For the good of the Hive.

* * *

 **A/N:** So the preliminaries are out of the way, yes?

Yes and no. The next chapters coming up treats people as things: hosts and bonding-pairs. If you are at all a bit squeamish, you may wish to turn to something milder as this story will not shy what happens to humans who fall into clutches of the hive.

You have been warned. Turn ye away, for here be dragons.


	4. Good

**_One year ago ..._**

 _Calendar year 2415 by ship's reckoning, interplanetary space, aboard the USS Tyrargo._

 _Earth-bound._

 _Original surviving crew: 3 total, marines: 2, scientist: 1, cryosleep, biosigns nominal._

 _Additional passenger: 1, species: human, designation: unknown, cryosleep, biosigns nominal._

 _WARNING: Xenomorph XX121 infestation detected: one queen, one guard, one drone. Self-destruct sequence overridden. Communications transceivers destroyed. Recommend termination with extreme prejudice on contact._

 _Transitioning from interstellar travel to planetary reentry orbital sequence in 3... 2... 1... now._

* * *

The ship ... _shifted._ The change from acceleration to deceleration was caught quickly by the life-support systems so that only the merest bump was felt by the life-forms in the ship, but all three of the hive looked up at once.

One Arm spoke first: "We all felt that?" she confirmed.

The Queen snarled a command: "Second!"

"On it!" Second shouted as she ran from the mess deck, One Arm close behind. Second shouted back to One Arm as she ran. "Check on the hosts and report their condition to the Queen immediately!"

One Arm peeled off from Second's beeline toward the bridge. One Arm headed deep into the bowels where the hosts were reposed in cryo. She examined the four sealed hushed caskets.

And waited.

There.

There was one heartbeat.

She waited until she heard heartbeats from each of the caskets, particularly the most important one whose occupant inside, taller, rail-thin, pale, but o-so-important that none of the others mattered to the Queen which meant none of the others mattered to One Arm.

There: a weak, little, _tha-thump_ as Newt's heart beat once, then rested.

One Arm waited another five minutes, each second agony to the Queen, she knew, but she had to be sure, and heard the heart beat again.

She ran back to the mess deck.

"The hosts are unharmed!" she shouted, still running as she entered the mess deck. "Newt is okay!"

"You sure?" the Queen snarled.

"Yes!" One Arm felt the Queen's anxiety like it was a weight in the room. "I verified she has a pulse and stayed to confirm it."

"Check again!" the Queen commanded.

"I will!" One Arm was already in motion, backing away from her Queen out of the mess deck.

"AND JOIN SECOND AND FIND WHAT IS HAPPENING! _NOW!"_ the Queen shouted after One Arm.

One Arm did what the Queen commanded.

Unquestioningly.

...

One Arm, after verifying the hosts were still as they were, found Second on the bridge interacting with the equipment. She found it amazing that Second could interact with these systems. But, then again, the Queen commanded Second learn this, and, over more than one hundred cycles of travel from ζ Reticuli to here, Second learned. It was helpful that the ship's systems also learned to communicate with Second, in its own way, and taught Second what to ask, and how, to get the information she needed to relate to the Queen.

Although a construct learning along with Second may have been helpful, insofar as it was creepy, One Arm wasn't sure she would have known how to start, even with that: it was an alien artifact, after all!

So One Arm was happy Second knew what to do, because she surely didn't like the host's tech. After all, her most recent contact with it blew off her forearm.

"The Queen wants to know what's happening," One Arm prompted.

"Working on it," Second grunted in reply.

"Now," One Arm added helpfully.

Second blew out a long breath. "Do _you_ want work with this thing?" she snapped.

"No," One Arm replied, "that's your job."

"Then let me do my job!" Second was breathing heavily.

Working with the alien tech was hard enough, but being nagged about getting answers now was intolerable to her. The Queen always wanted to react, but if she chose the wrong course of action, the whole hive could be lost. Second was the only voice of reason at times, and too many times, at that!

One Arm didn't see it that way. "What's the problem? Just ask it what's happening."

"I did," Second replied tersely. "It said we're decelerating."

"Obviously," One Arm replied, "but why? toward what? Are we nearing our destination?"

Second snarled. So much for One Arm giving her space to figure things out. She did her best to ignore One Arm's pestering and focus on the problem.

"Computer," she said, "why are we decelerating?"

"Approaching the destination."

The alien tech did its best to use words of the hive, but its vocabulary was limited, even if its enunciation was much better than little Newt's. Sometimes she would say the most unintentionally hilarious, or dangerous, things, because her little human (single) mouth just couldn't hiss nor snarl properly.

And when Newt – a little human thing? – snarled?

it was difficult not to fall over laughing when Newt spoke.

But this wasn't Newt, and this situation wasn't funny.

"What is the destination?" Second continued.

"Planet [human noise 'Earth']: the human/host home-world," came the response.

It was also hard communicating with a room, that gave no reaction and emoted nothing. It was unreasonable, of course, to expect alien constructs to react in fear or anger or shame or terror, but a fundamental way of conveying meaning for the hive was via pheromones. Hearing and smell were the hive's primary forms of communication, so with only sounds coming from a disemboweled voice there seemed to be no intent which made the assembled words seem meaningless.

"So, that's good," One Arm broke in, "I'll inform the Queen."

"Not so fast!" Second shouted, stopping her.

One Arm stopped, mid-stride. "What?" she asked.

"This is what's confounding me," Second said to One Arm, then addressing the computer. "Computer, what are the current positions of us and the destination?"

"Displayed," the alien artifact responded.

For Second and One Arm nothing happened, seeing nothing of the hologram in the room, for the Xenomorphs do not have eyes to see as humans do.

"Ping them," Second rapped out in annoyance.

"Acknowledged," the computer replied, the emitted a series of pings which it labeled.

"Our location." The computer pinged. Second and One Arm felt/heard a sound near them. "[Human sound]/Dirt/Earth." The computer pinged some distance from them. "Other planets in this solar system." The computer emitted very soft sounds throughout the bridge. "The Sun." A ping in the center of the bridge.

"Do you grasp the problem now?" Second asked quietly after a moment.

One Arm didn't waste time trying to understand what Second meant. "No. It appears we are headed toward our destination."

"It does, doesn't it," Second responded bemused. "We're headed right toward the planet."

One Arm waited for Second to explain herself.

She waited in vain. _When Second gets in her Moods,_ One Arm thought impatiently. "And so? Isn't that what we want?"

"Maybe," Second replied.

One Arm _tsk_ ed in annoyance. When the Queen wanted something _now!_ it was best to give her that something _now!_ and not think a thing to death!

"... but observe," Second added. "Computer, project trajectories of us and the destination."

"Computed," came the reply.

"And ping," Second growled.

"Pinging," the computer replied coolly. "One second is one [human sound 'day']/three cycles."

Second and One Arm observed the ping trails. Their ship continued into the Solar system. No planet came near them, but as they moved past the orbits of the outer planets, the Earth moved away as the ship moved in a straight line.

After a minute, Second commanded. "Computer: stop."

The pinging stopped.

"Do you understand the problem now?" Second asked as she gestured into the room. "We're moving, but the target planet has moved in its orbit as well. Given this projected course, we'll be heading straight into their star."

"Oh," said One Arm, getting it finally, then grimly: "I'll inform the Queen."

One Arm quickly left Second on the bridge.

...

 _"WHAT? INTO THE SUN? That lying! deceitful! duplicitous! ... construct! It promised it was delivering us the hosts' home world, and now THIS?"_

One Arm was bowed low to the deck-plating as she delivered Second's findings. She didn't expect this would mollify the Queen. It didn't.

It seemed that to be the Queen was to expect everything to go her way, and then to become enraged when it didn't. An unenviable position, upon reflection.

 _"FIX THIS! NOW!"_ The Queen screamed at One Arm.

"Yes, my Queen," One Arm didn't even bother to argue, nor discuss how to 'unsabotage' – was that a word? – Alien tech she had no idea how it worked, so she wouldn't even know where to start to fix the problem, having just learned from Second that there was even a problem in the first place.

One Arm argued none of these things with the Queen. The Queen commanded; One Arm obeyed. If the Queen had commanded she extinguish the star toward which they were falling, One Arm would have thrown herself at it in blind obedience to the Queen's order: such was the nature of loyalty in the Hive.

One Arm began to back out of the mess deck. She would help Second solve this problem, no matter what it took.

Second entered. "It's fixed," she stated coolly.

Silence.

The Queen regarded Second coldly. "What?" she asked, fury boiling beneath the calm surface of her question.

Second ignored the stink of the Queen's fury. "It's fixed. What you will is done, so I did it." Second paused, a smirk wreathing her words, "Are you not pleased?"

The Queen regarded Second. She knew she was being played, somehow, she just didn't see how. No matter how smart the Queen fancied herself, she knew she was no match to Second's intellect.

"Very," the Queen snarled in displeasure.

"Did you want me to explain what I did, my Queen?" Second offered.

The Queen drummed her fingers. "To me? No. I am not interested in trivia, but you will instruct One Arm on what you did so she shall learn the working of these strange systems."

"Of course, my Queen," Second acquiesced pleasantly.

Second knew the Queen's moods, better than the Queen herself did. The Queen needed to sulk now, and, after coming to terms that she got was she had wanted, she'd offer some 'apology' by finding some minor, nonexistent, fault of Second's that annoyed her and then berating her for it.

Such was the nature of their relationship.

"Tell me this, ..." the Queen said, slightly mollified, and displeased to find herself so.

Second was so dependably brilliant.

"How many cycles until we reach the destination?" she asked.

"A lot, my Queen," Second cautioned.

"Not helping," the Queen grated. "Specify."

"Something over one thousand cycles," Second stated.

Silence as that datum sunk in to all listeners.

"How is that even possible?" the Queen asked quietly. "We travel between two stellar systems forty light years apart in ... less than one hundred cycles, and you're saying we're going to take nearly ten times that to enter a system and land on a planet within it, going a distance of ... how far, Second?"

Second replied, ready with the information: "Not even one-one-hundredth of a light year, my Queen."

The Queen waited for the explanation.

Second nodded. "Yes," she said, "that surprised me, as well. So I queried their navigation system. That shift we felt? This vessel has two propulsion systems. One for interstellar travel, a faster-than-light drive, and one for traveling within systems where precision is required: like landing on a planet instead of flying into a star. We can travel quickly between stellar systems, but within a stellar system ..." Here Second shrugged, "... not so much."

"I am not pleased with this," the Queen remarked. "One thousand cycles?"

Second did not reply.

The Queen mulled this over. Nearly another year in space when already a month traveling between the stars felt like they had been between the stars forever! "I will think on this," she declared. "Second, take One Arm with you and show her what you did."

"Yes, my Queen," Second said and both members of the Hive backed away from their Queen out of the mess deck.

...

Back on the bridge One Arm asked Second. "So, ... what did you do? How did you do it?"

Second chuckled. "I waited."

One Arm knew her sister well enough to know that the answer she gave was all she was going to give, smug as she was. Second, as the eldest after the Queen, felt it her privilege to be better and smarter than everyone else, sometimes, One Arm feared, Second took this fancy too far and felt herself to be superior to the Queen.

One Arm sighed. "So, ... what do I tell the Queen? Because that isn't helpful at all."

"Actually, you could tell her that, because waiting is exactly what we needed to do," Second replied calmly.

"Please explain," One Arm answered diplomatically.

One Arm reigned in her explosive fury. Why did she have this fury? The Queen's moods affected the entire hive, and when the Queen was furious, she took it out on whoever or whatever was close... except Newt, because Newt, being human, was such a fragile thing that one incautious action from the Queen would crush the human beyond repair.

The human was good for something after all: the Queen had to be calm, and patient, and gentle when Newt was around, and a Queen exhibiting any of those traits would have been impossible for a member of the Hive to imagine. A Queen exhibiting all these traits: unfathomable.

Except for this Queen.

But now Newt was in cryosleep, and so there was nothing to blunt the edge of the Queen's raw emotion.

Second explained. "Observe," she said. "Computer: recall our trajectory to the destination planet."

"Computed," it said.

"But I thought you said we were going to fly into the star and miss our destination?" One Arm demanded impatiently.

"What did I say about waiting?" Second scolded.

One Arm shut both her inner and outer mouths hard before she gave an answer she really wanted to give.

Second chuckled, smelling One Arm's repressed anger. This was progress: at least she was biting her tongue now, instead of just reacting.

A good, little worker took her orders and did her tasks. Second was not a good, little worker. She was much better than that, and that's why the Queen relied on her for, well: everything. Yes, it made things tense, and more than tense at times between the two, but Second did know her place in the Hive hierarchy, she knew when to shut up and let the Queen have her way, and she knew when the Queen's little tiffs didn't help herself nor the Hive.

And, importantly, the Queen knew this, too.

One Arm had to learn this if she were to be more than just a good, little worker.

Second waited one more beat, to reinforce the lesson on waiting, as she saw it. One Arm saw it as rubbing it in, but so it goes. One Arm also knew her place, and learning a lesson was hard, but the Queen had ordered it, which mean she had to do it. Liking it or not was not a consideration she could entertain.

"So," Second continued, lesson imparted. "Computer: ping our trajectory all the way to landing."

"Trajectory, one-second time-lapsed to one [human word: day]," the computer responded immediately, and, as commanded, began pinging away the ship's position in space along with the planets in their orbits.

The first minute proceeded as before: the ship fell into the Solar System, and the Earth, in its orbit, moved away from the projected rendezvous path.

One Arm didn't see the point. "And ...?" she prompted.

"Wait for it," Second responded patiently.

Two minutes. The Earth's ping was directly behind the Sun's now, but had the Sun moved a hair from its original position? One Arm couldn't tell.

A half-a-minute later, One Arm could tell. The ship continued straight and true, but, instead of aimed at the center of the Sun, it would either skim the surface or pass through its corona.

Either way: still very, very fatal.

Almost three minutes had passed with nothing remarkable happening.

"So?" One Arm demanded.

Second sighed. Apparently the lesson in patience was a hard one to learn.

But not for Second. She waited.

Three and a half minutes: the something incredible happened. The Earth's ping rushed from behind the Sun's and began to move toward a point exactly where the ship was headed.

"Oh," One Arm said.

Four minutes: the Earth's ping merged with the ship's.

"Planetfall," the computer intoned. "Relative velocity to the Earth's: 5 meters per second, plus or minus 50 meters per second."

One Arm looked to Second. "Is that ... good?" she asked carefully.

Second shrugged.

"That's helpful," One Arm remarked caustically.

"Ask the computer," Second directed.

"Uh, what?" One Arm was taken back at this.

"Ask the computer," Second repeated calmly.

One Arm puzzled over this. "How do I ask it?"

Second chuckled. "You've observed me interacting with it. The Queen wants you to know how do this as well. So: ask." Then Second's outer jaw opened to show her teeth in a clearly challenging sneer, and she added slyly: "Or, are you scared to?"

Fury washed through One Arm's circulatory system, and she sunk lower into her stance: "Say that to me again, Second."

Second chuckled again. "We can play after you do what the Queen commanded you to do. Now ask the computer your question."

One Arm relaxed from her stance. She ground her teeth in thought and her tail swished back and forth. She faced Second, then she faced the nothingness that was the empty bridge, then she returned to face Second.

"Hard to talk to nothing, isn't it?" Second observed.

"No," One Arm growled, annoyed that Second so easily read her.

"Well, ...?" Second prompted.

One Arm remained facing Second, refusing to acknowledge the nothing in the bridge was something. Whether this made it harder or easier for her, she could not tell.

"Uh, ... Computer?" One Arm asked, the word strange in her mouths. "Is this ... good?"

"Ambiguous query; please reformulate," was the response she got from the room.

She faced Second, not knowing what to do, but Second remained a stone, unhelpful.

"Uh, ... what does that mean?" One Arm directed this question to Second.

Second nodded. "I got this a lot when I started interacting with it. I don't know what it means, either, but my guess is that it means it doesn't understand your question. Maybe it doesn't like talking about generalities. So, let me ask you ..." Second paused for a second, then she took a different course. "No, you ask yourself this question: what do you mean by 'good,' specifically?"

One Arm thought about this. "Uh, 'not bad'? ... I don't know," she said, finally giving up.

Thinking really isn't a strong suit for workers of the Hive.

Of course, most humans think they think, but they are quite mistaken in this, for they find actual thinking and reasoning impossible, too, but One Arm did not know this. Even if this knowledge may have been of some comfort to her had she known, now she was just faced with the silence in the bridge with Second judging her and the computer, a non-existent thing, rejecting her question.

"Well, then, ask the computer what you mean," Second prompted.

"Urh?" One Arm was taken aback. "What do you mean? Are you saying this thing knows what I mean?"

Second's jaws opened in a wicked grin. "As far as I can tell: yes."

The ramifications of this for One Arm were not comforting. Alien technology, watching her all the time? And knowing what her intentions were? But worse of all: invisible to her. Everything about this alien tech was, ... well, alien: complicated and incomprehensible.

And they were going toward its own home world. Did this mean that the Hive were a part of some larger alien strategy? Did these humans offer their own vessel to exterminate the Hive on LV-426 and then to bring a very small, and very easily subdued, sample back?

And, ... Second had to know all this! Was that why she was so calm about it? What did she and the Queen know that One Arm did not? And what was their plan for the Hive to prevail?

Hive plans verses alien plans. Schemes within schemes.

One Arm's head was spinning. It hurt to think! No wonder why she was so bad at it!

One Arm quested out to Second. This was her sole comfort: if Second knew, then she would let her do anything stupid, would she?

No, she wouldn't. With that knowledge, One Arm pressed forward.

"Uh, ... computer," One Arm essayed. "What what do I mean by 'good' in this case?"

"I am not to project what you mean by 'good,'" the room responded evenly, but One Arm thought she detected a hint of impatience from the non-thing. The voice continued: "Do you wish an assessment of impact velocities on crew, Xenomorph intruders or ship structural integrity?"

One Arm stood before Second, motionless, but feeling overwhelmed.

Second smirked. She remembered well this feeling. "All three," Second responded crisply.

"Acknowledged," the voice said. Did One Arm hear a touch of relief in the voice? A sound of: _'finally dealing with somebody who knows what they are doing!'?_ Or was she projecting her own defensiveness here?

The computer continued. "One. Crew in stasis will only be affected if their cryotubes are ruptured, so that assessment will come with the hull integrity scenarios. Active crew should be securely restrained and will survive in excess of ten G's without internal organ damage. If not secured they have a 90% chance of injury at nine meters per second, a 60% chance of that injury being severe. At 18 meters per second at impact, there is a 54% chance of crew member fatality, but should they survive, injury is certain with an 85% chance of the injury being severe."

"Two, ..." it continued.

"Stop," Second commanded. "So," she directed at One Arm, "did you get all that?"

"Yes," One Arm replied guardedly.

Second chuckled quietly. "What did you get?"

One Arm hissed. She hated being toyed with, as she felt that this was what this probing question was. She bore down and answered the question, anyway. "I got ..." she mulled, "that if they are in cryotubes they should be okay if the ship is okay, but if not, there's a really good chance of them being injured or killed."

"Huh," Second grunted, hiding her pleasure that One Arm actually did get it, but tested her further: "because our reentry speed is ... what?"

One Arm worked her jaw. "Uhhhh, ... I don't remember. Fast?"

"No," Second said. "Wrong."

One Arm bristled at this.

Second continued, ignoring the anger directed toward her. "The Queen is going to ask you, and you have to _know,_ and saying the humans 'might' get hurt because we're going 'fast' won't cut it. Do you know why?"

One Arm nodded back toward the center of the ship. "Newt," she said.

"Yes: Newt," Second replied. "We have to be absolutely sure she will be safe. _Any_ uncertainty here will send the Queen into a rage; you know this. And when the Queen is in a rage, everything stops, because she'll intercede personally, which will only fuck things up worse. We can't have that. If there is any possible harm in either Newt's or the Queen's way, we have to know what it is, and we have to crush it. Clear?"

"Clear," One Arm replied. Now she was learning. She saw better how Second had to anticipate everything the Queen wanted and answered that want before the Queen even thought it. She started to realize the enormity of being one of the Queen's guards. You didn't just stand there, bored, until something approached the Queen, then you would strike before it ever got near. There was more to it, which surprised One Arm.

"Good," Second said. "So, how fast will our speed be at impact?"

"I don't know," One Arm said humbly.

"No, wrong again!" Second rebuked.

One Arm hissed.

"Look," Second said, "If the Queen asked this question, would 'I don't know' satisfy her?"

"No," One Arm admitted.

"Well, then," Second continued. "Satisfy her! When you go before the Queen, you have to know what you are to say, but also what questions she will ask and what your answers will be."

"Wouldn't it just be easier if _you_ talked with the Queen?" One Arm asked, annoyed.

"Yes, it would be easier," Second replied dismissively. "Now, what's our impact speed?"

One Arm growled. She wanted to scream: _'I don't know!'_ and be done with this conversation, but she had the sinking feeling that this was how it was going to be from now on.

Why couldn't things be simple? Why did she have to shoulder responsibility now? She was just a worker! The only one left! ... who saved the Queen against the human counter-offensive, but still!

One Arm sighed. "Computer," she snarled, "what is our speed of impact when we reach the target planet?"

"Five meters per second, plus or minus fifty meters per second," the computer replied.

"Was that hard?" Second chided.

"Shut," One Arm snapped, "your fucking mouths."

Second chuckled, pleased. "So, the humans will be safe, because they're in their cryotubes, right?"

One Arm thought about this: "... Yesssss...?" she said carefully, "... I mean, _it_ said if the ship doesn't take damage they won't, so we have to know what kind of damage this ship can take to be sure, but ... yes."

"Huh," Second said, again pleased. "What if the humans aren't in the cryotubes?"

"Why wouldn't they be?" One Arm asked surprised.

Second shrugged. "Just a hunch. The Queen's getting restless. What if she pulls them out of cryo before reentry?"

One Arm snorted at this idea. "Well, then, one: they're fucked, because it was a fucking nightmare forcing them into cryo in the first place, so you think they're going to play nice with us just because we overwhelmed them before and now we stupidly let them out? No! We suffered too many losses just to contain them! As soon as they're out of cryo, they're going to try to kill us and get wiped out trying! You've seen them fight! They just don't give up!"

It was frustrating fighting the humans. A weaker species should just surrender, but they didn't! And they also didn't know when they were soundly beaten, either! While they still breathed, they just kept fighting. That's why implanting them as hosts was the only way to control them.

One Arm shook her head at that nightmare. Stupid humans!

"So, okay, that," she continued. "But, two, they're out, and they're peaceful with us ... somehow? ... because ... I don't know! But that doesn't change that the impact will kill them if they aren't restrained. And if they aren't restrained then the injuries will be ... 'severe'? Which means they'll die from their injuries if not the impact itself! Because, what? Tending humans? Who's going to do that? You? Me?"

One Arm laughed at the hilarity of that idea.

It was pretty funny. One Arm accidentally killed one of the males in her blitz into the ship, just slamming him aside, but a human body tended to squish when hitting a ship's bulkhead that hard, One Arm found out, and boy! did she catch hell from the Queen for needlessly killing a possible host to recover their losses. Like she could know this, ... how?

"Okay, good," Second said.

One Arm's tail twitched in surprise. "How is that good?" she asked.

Second emoted pleasure. "You know what you're going to say to the Queen, and you know how to counter the alternative she may bring up. That's good."

"But what if she chooses to wake the humans from cryosleep, anyway?" One Arm insisted.

Second shrugged. "She is the Queen."

And that was explanation enough for Second.

It wasn't for One Arm. How could a worker prevent the Queen from making a wrong decision? Second seemed to be able to do it. The Queen took her counsel and weighed it, ... then did whatever she wanted to do, yes, but still Second had a say in what the Queen decided, and the Queen ... sometimes, ... rarely, ... okay, _never_ did what Second advised.

What was the point of giving the Queen information is she were going to do what she wanted, anyway? And then, when the worst happened, she'd turn on you and scream at you to fix it!

And you weren't even allowed to say: _'I told you so!'_

Not to the Queen.

"So, we've got the scenarios covered?" Second's voice brought One Arm back to the present.

One Arm thought about this. "No," she said. "They are safe in the cryotubes if the ship is safe, but we don't know if the ship will be safe on reentry."

"But we can find that information out, can't we," Second prompted.

"Unh," One Arm grunted, taking the hint. "Computer, what is the safe reentry speed for this ship?"

"There is no safe reentry speed for the _USS Tyrargo,"_ the computer responded.

"What?" One Arm barked.

"There is no safe reentry speed for the _USS Tyrargo,"_ it repeated.

"Computer, explain," Second broke in impatiently.

"The _Tyrargo_ is an interstellar warship," the computer stated. "It is meant for transport and combat in space, but planetary insertions are to be conducted by dropship. The _Tyrargo_ may space-dock, but a planetary entry, even a controlled one, will cause severe structural damage once the ship makes contact with a planet's surface. An uncontrolled entry such as this one, however, has a very high probability of extensive structural damage and comprehensive system-wide failure."

"Well, that sucks!" One Arm muttered discouraged.

Second put a staying claw on One Arm's shoulder.

"Computer," Second asked, "is it possible for the cryotubes to remain safe during reentry even given ship structural damage?"

"No," the computer said.

"Wow," Second whispered.

"What?" One Arm demanded. She had never seen Second impressed by anything.

Second shrugged. "It's nothing," she said, "it's just that the computer always gives multiple scenarios and outcomes. This is the first time I've heard a definitive answer from it."

"... but not the answer we wanted to hear," One Arm surmised.

"No," Second agreed grimly, "this is not good news to bring to the Queen at all. Let's go tell her."

"Wait," One Arm said.

Second stopped mid-turn from the bridge.

"Computer," One Arm said, "what are the chances of us surviving this reentry?"

"Very high," the computer said.

"Huh?" One Arm grunted. "Explain."

One Arm did not realize this, but she was starting to get the hang of working with the ship's technology, and she was taking to interacting with the computer naturally. Second noted this change in her sister's confidence.

"Although hard data is limited on your species," the computer said, "it has been observed that your exoskeletal structures are more rigid than the ship's hull, so blunt-object damage is not an issue as it is for humans, and it is surmised that internal organs are well-protected from the effects of high G's, although this information is yet to be confirmed. Armor-piercing rounds and tactical explosives and atomics are effective methods of destruction, which means that if the ship particulates at reentry, severe or fatal injury may be sustained, but this would occur only in the case of total ship destruction at high velocity, and this scenario has a very low probability of occurring given the ship's projected reentry speed."

"Huh," One Arm grunted again. "So that is one good thing, then."

"It depends on your definition of 'good,'" the computer countered.

"What?" One Arm hissed at it, put out.

"An infestation of the Xenomorph XX121 species on the planet Earth would not be considered 'good' by most of its inhabitants," the computer reported.

 _"Like I care what your species considers 'good'?"_ One Arm screamed.

Second's claw came to rest on One Arm's shoulder. "It doesn't care," she said. "Come, we must inform the Queen now."

Second had to coax One Arm from the bridge, but not before she turned back, once, and hissed at the room, hating the non-thing that dared lecture her on what 'good' meant.

...

They gave their report. One Arm gave most of it. The Queen asked questions. Sometimes Second inserted her perspective.

And then they waited before the Queen as she sat in silence.

It was a very sullen silence.

"So," the Queen said eventually, "there are no good outcomes here."

One Arm clenched her jaws very tightly, not daring to ask what the Queen meant by 'good.'

This is when Second stepped in: "Not for the humans, my Queen, neither in cryo nor unrestrained. Even restrained if the ship's structure bends or collapses on them, they are ... well, ... you know humans, my Queen."

The Queen's jaw worked. She did know humans. Hunted quite a few of them herself. Such fragile things they were!

"And we remain unscathed," she confirmed.

Second nudged One Arm who replied: "Yes, my Queen."

The Queen pondered this.

"So we are safe when we crash into the planet, even as this vessel twists around us? This is so?" she demanded.

"Yes, my Queen," One Arm said and explained: "We are stronger than the ship's ..."

 _"Hssst!"_ The Queen hissed angrily.

One Arm shut her jaws and waited.

The Queen tapped her claws against her chest-armor: _one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four._

Then she came to a decision.

"One year?" she demanded of Second.

"... until planetfall: yes, my Queen," Second replied.

"You," the Queen declared, rising up to a squat on her haunches, towering over her two subjects. "You will learn how to bring the humans out of cryosleep, but _do nothing_ with them until I command. In six cycle's time, _and not one second before,_ you will return to me for further instructions. This, I command."

"We obey," both One Arm and Second said in unison.

"Get out of my presence," the Queen snarled, "and seal the door to this chamber when you leave!"

"Yes, my Queen," both said in unison and scurried backward quickly out of the mess deck.

As soon as they sealed the door, a torrent of sounds blasted from inside the mess deck, the Queen screamed in rage, and she kept screaming in her fury. She ripped tables, bolted down, from their moorings and threw them against bulkheads as she arose, her dorsal spines scraping against the overhead, scarring them, as she laid swaths of destruction in her rampage about the mess deck.

Second pulled One Arm away from the sounds of carnage. They had a lot to learn, and only six cycles to learn it.

And it would not be good to come back to the Queen not having done what she commanded.

Not good at all.


	5. First Egg

_**Five and seven-eighths cycles, or nearly two days, later ...**_

The screams coming from the mess deck abated after the first hours, but then came again full-force, rising to an ear-piercing keening.

One Arm was nervous: "Should we ... check if the Queen needs anything?"

Second was not. "Has it been six cycles?"

"No, but ..." One Arm began.

Second cut in. "No, it hasn't. If she needs us, she will call us."

"How can you be so calm?" One Arm demanded. "What if she's dying? What if she's ..." One Arm didn't know how to continue. All kinds of terrible scenarios flitted through her head: alien attack, evil beams of focused energy emanating from their homeworld slowly melting her into a puddle of acid!

What? It could happen!

Such was the frame of mind of One Arm. Six cycles away from her Queen and all sorts of fears and terrors filled her.

Not that these terrors were not justified, albeit overwrought, for the Hive was the Queen and the Queen was the Hive, and its members trembled before her and worried over her always.

But not all of the Hive were such worry-warts! "I can be so calm," Second said, "because what am I going to do? Run in there and get my dome smashed in? Or make sure I've covered all possible scenarios of reviving the humans by running through it one more time?"

 _"We've run through these scenarios a hundred times!"_ One Arm cried, distraught.

The Queen's screams were really putting her on edge.

"Ah," Second said calmly, "so you've got it down cold?"

 _"Yes!"_ One Arm was vibrating in place, and not facing Second at all, but facing toward the sounds of the screams ...

... which suddenly stopped.

One Arm drew in her breath and rushed toward the exit of the cryochamber.

"So," Second shouted after her, "if the Queen asks you to revive Newt now, you'll be 100% sure you can do that without issue?"

One Arm stopped.

The silence in the ship was deafening.

"... Yes?" she said slowly, turning back.

"Really?" Second asked. "Or did you want to run through all possible scenarios, say ... just once more to be sure?"

One Arm hung her head.

"It hasn't been a full six cycles yet, you know," Second added.

"I know!" One Arm barked, but reluctantly returned to Second's side.

"Okay," Second said, and returned to the controls of the cryotubes. "From the top?"

...

 _At six cycles, and not one second earlier._

"Come," the Queen's tired voice came from within the mess deck. Second and One Arm were waiting by the door, but dared not enter without permission. The Queen knew they would be waiting for her.

The Queen knew everything.

The mess deck was transformed. Before it looked vaguely human with the center area exploded out to make room for its new, permanent resident, the Queen.

Now, there was no trace of humanity that remained. Webbing of the Queen's mucus radiated out from the central area from where the Queen sat enthroned in convoluted waves of Hive resin which now coated the deck, the bulkheads, and reached high up toward the overhead, even.

But the changes to the room, the feels and the smells, were nothing to what sat right in front of their Queen: a single egg.

It was one meter in height and approximately a half-meter wide, still coated in slime from exiting the Queen's abdomen.

The Queen was prone, resting her dome on her forward claws.

"Wow!" Now it was One Arm's turn to be impressed.

"New plan," the Queen quipped, exhausted. "You be Queen, Second."

"Ha, ha!" Second laughed dryly.

"I wasn't joking," the Queen growled crossly.

"That's why it's so funny," Second returned.

One Arm looked at the interplay between her Queen and Second. They had to be joking, right? Because you couldn't just become a Queen, could you? So One Arm dismissed those comments out of hand, but that even Second dared to answer back to the Queen was amazing, in and of itself.

No one dared answer the Queen when she commanded something, even lightly. No one.

"Fuck," the Queen muttered. "That fucking hurt," she said pointing her chin toward the egg. "How am I going to do that over and over again?"

"Maybe it gets easier after the first thousand times or so?" Second offered.

 _"You idiot!"_ the Queen shrieked, enraged. _"A Hive of one hundred workers is already large! Why would I ever lay one thousand eggs!"_

Second shrugged nonchalantly. "Well, there's that," she said.

The Queen _tsk_ ed. "Second, ..." she sighed, deflated. "Not now. I'm just not in the mood."

"Urh," Second grunted her assent, but thought a wry thought to herself: _'Not in the "mood."'_

The Queen was a moody bitch, no doubt about that.

The Queen breathed deeply for a moment, her Hive, all two members of it, waiting upon her in silence.

"You did as I said?" the Queen queried.

"Of course, my Queen," Second responded right away.

"Uhn."

Quiet again.

The Queen appeared to be like she was drifting off to sleep, her breaths coming in a slow, steady rhythm. She forcefully shook off her fatigue.

"If I were to tell you to revive the humans and bring them here, how long would that take?" she asked.

Second nudged One Arm, who took the lead in responding. "It would take a few hours to be able to remove a human from their cryotube safely, that is, without causing permanent physiological trauma. We ... _could_ revive all the humans as a group, but I strongly recommend against that. May I tell you the dangers of doing that?"

The Queen shook her head, "No," she said softly. "I'm sure you have sound reasoning, but I'm just not interested in hearing it. I only want one of them here, anyway." The Queen was quiet, then: "A few hours?"

"Yes, my Queen," One Arm replied, growing more assured in responding to her Queen.

"Uhn," the Queen acknowledged. "One cycle, then. In one cycle, you are to bring me their leader, the male, alive and unharmed. We will implant it then."

"The female warrior is much more dangerous," One Arm said, unconsciously rubbing the stump of her arm.

It was the female warrior that had lobbed the grenade at the Queen. The female warrior had pitched that explosive ball. One Arm had back-handed it, volleyed it back at her, or had tried to, but just after One Arm hit the grenade, it exploded, taking most of One Arm's forearm, and fragments of it had embedded themselves into her, the bulkheads and her exoskeletal structure.

Some of the fragments may have reached the human, too, for she was a bit bruised and bloodied when finally subdued. After all, One Arm wouldn't rough up that little human female, you know, just a bit, in retaliation.

O _f course she wouldn't!_

Karma can be a real bitch sometimes, can't it, especially when you help it along, ... just a bit.

But it was the female warrior, also, who had killed three of One Arm's sisters, killing more than any other human had. The male had killed two, yes, but it was the female who was the most dangerous in One Arm's estimation.

"Yes," the Queen agreed, "the female is the most dangerous. That is why she remains in cryo. Revive the male, and ... Second?"

"Yes, my Queen?" Second responded.

The Queen snarled softly. "Do not be lulled by these humans. We have suffered too many losses to them. Revive the one male, and bring it to me, but be ever vigilant with it! There are only you two now between it and me. I can not afford to lose either of you, do you understand? Absolutely no mistakes this time!"

"I understand, my Queen," Second replied. "No mistakes. I obey."

"Good," the Queen said, reassured. "Now, I rest."

With that, the Queen stilled, then slept.


	6. Taps

**Chapter Summary:**

Day is done  
Gone the Sun  
From the hills, from the lakes, from the sky  
All is well  
Gently rest

God is nigh.

It sucks to be human. No. It really does.

 **Warning:** Graphic depiction of character death.

* * *

Drowning.

Gunnery Sergeant Johnson was drowning in a translucent sea of milky white liquid. He tried to move; he couldn't. Instinctively, he drew in a big gulp of liquid and immediately began choking, it was airy, and liquid, and jelly – sour, salty, sweet jelly – all at the same time.

 _I'm in shock,_ he thought, trying to calm himself, but his body wouldn't listen. He needed to breathe, and he couldn't! Johnson was coughing liquid and sucking in goo, and he couldn't stop.

"Completing final stage of revival. Opening casket in 3... 2... 1... now."

The autonomous voice of the ship's computer vibrated its way into the liquid and into Johnson's awareness.

He held his breath. He remembered his training: this is what he needed to do. He needed to stay calm now. He was being revived from statis. He's done this before, hundreds of times, in fact. He just needed to stay calm and let the process run its course. He opened his mouth and let the oyxgen-rich jelly slime its way down his throat as the glass enclosure pulled away from him like a sheath being pulled off a sword.

The jelly rolled off him, and his face was clear. His chest, then his arms, then his lower body was cleared of the enclosure. Finally freed, Gunnery Sergeant (not 'Sarg,' thank you!) Johnson rolled out of the casket onto the deck on his hands and knees and promptly emptied his guts of milky-white goo.

"Corpsman!" he shouted for assistance.

Dead silence was his only answer. Gunny Sergeant Johnson flipped away from his own puke and wiped his eyes, trying to get his bearings. Heavy footsteps approached him, _clank, clank, clank!_

"'Bout time, God damn it," he barked. "Discipline is going to helllll-..."

Not one, but two, of those fucking space-bugs swam into view and loomed over him.

 _"Hsssssst!"_

Johnson's rolled his head back. It hit the deck, then he shut his eyes.

Discipline had indeed gone to hell.

"Well, fuck!" he muttered. Johnson hated being right. What he hated most about it was that he always was.

The bugs grabbed him by his upper arms, one per arm, and dragged him from the cryo-deck.

...

"Either you bugs got a stogie on you by any chance?" Johnson asked to pass the time.

That, and cryo-jelly in the mouth tasted like freeze-dried battery acid. Mix that with your own puke, and he wouldn't turn down a shot of 'shine if they offered that to him, either.

The two bugs didn't react at all, they crouched on their haunches, staring him down. Johnson sat propped up against a bulkhead in the main deck near the mess deck, that is: Johnson and his johnson, as the bugs grabbed him right off the cryo-deck and didn't even have the courtesy to offer him one of those stupid one-piece smocks they gave you out of cryo after you cleaned yourself up, you know, for modesty's sake as you decompressed, crashing from La-La Land that the drugs they pumped into and then waking up from the cryo deep-sleep didn't help none, neither!

So, there he was: him, his dick, and two big bugs giving him their undivided attention. He so much as twitched a finger, and those fuckers were on full alert, spines standing straight up on their backs, mouths hissing and slobbering, and claws extended, ready to rip him to shreds, no doubt, so Gunny didn't push his luck, ... much.

"So," he said conversationally, "what happens now? Are you in line to suck my dick?"

And he twitched his dick in a friendly fashion.

Nothing from the bugs.

"Well, now," Gunny growled sarcastically, "don't all rush in at once! Get in line, you motherfuckers! Or is this big, black dick scaring you sissies?"

Nothing.

After a time, Gunny shifted uncomfortably.

"Fuck!" Gunny grimaced wryly. "This is you're strat? Bore me to death? Because it's working."

The aliens maintained a vigilant watch on Gunnery Sergeant Johnson during his whole little attempt at discourse. Unbeknownst to them, or so he thought, Gunny was taking in every possible detail in the hopes to work some small advantage in the situation as it emerged.

One of them, he observed, was bigger and seemed to be command. The smaller one was missing a good part of its right arm, but seemed to handle itself just as well as its chief bug, which was not only whole, but noticeably larger, fully a meter taller.

 _Must be the alpha male,_ Gunny thought to himself.

So, if he could take that one out, the littler one might get him, yes, but it would strike a blow to the bugs, maybe disrupting them for a while, maybe long enough to defrost Corporal Torres, and _then_ maybe they could do something.

See, Gunny Sergeant Johnson wasn't a big talker, but he was an observant ess-oh-bee, and he drunk every last detail as he was dragged from the cryo-chamber to here, and he figured if he kept up the patois, one of them might get annoyed enough to do something. And that was the key to combat, get the other guy to commit to something stupid, and then kill him.

Gunny had been in several engagements with these bugs. They were tough motherfuckers, no doubt, but they won, mostly, by overrunning you. One-on-one you'd lose, still, and handily at that, but maybe he could get one mixed up with the other, and, hey! take them both out ... with his bare hands? Okay, stupid plan, but, Gunny Sergeant Johnson wasn't anything if he wasn't a Marine, and a Marine would adapt, improvise, overcome, and kill these motherfucking bugs dead! And that was exactly his plan.

How many more of them on the ship? He didn't get a good count during combat: his team stormed the ship, and like all good bugs, they charged and overran his team, discipline all gone to hell with the fucking rookies facing bugs for the first time. He knew they took some casualties; he had done a bit of the damage, himself, but how many more of them, he didn't know.

One problem at a time. Deal with these bugs first, then get armored up, get support, then clean the ship of every last one of these motherfuckers.

Suddenly, both bugs' heads snapped up and looked toward the mess deck, hearing some silent command.

"So, ... urk!" was all Gunny could grunt before both bugs grabbed him and dragged him into the mess deck.

Everything had changed. It was dark, but the deck was spongy with alien slime, translucent bug webbing was sprayed everywhere, and the whole place stunk of bug. Gunny looked over the top of his head and saw the biggest bug he had ever seen.

"Holy fuck!" he exclaimed. "You are the ugliest motherfu-..."

The bugs quickly flipped Gunny over, and he was face-to-face with a big old egg.

"What the fuck?" he gasped.

The egg flowered open, and

 _THUMP!_

That was Gunny Sergeant Johnson's last gasp, because suddenly a big wet hand completely covered his face, everything went back, and a long, whiplike tail snaked around his neck, simultaneously strangling him and firmly anchoring it to him.

Gunny opened his mouth to breathe, to scream, and that's when the face-hugger shoved its proboscis into his mouth and down his throat.

It was well-lubricated with slime, so it slid right in, ... or, more accurately, forced its way into his throat and down into his stomach. In other words, Gunnery Sergeant Johnson was getting the worst skull-fucking that anyone had ever gotten, and the alien tubing was thick and firm, forcing this throat to expand to accept the foreign object.

He was going to have the worst sore throat when he woke up, ... if he woke up, ... but that would be the least of his problems.

Something had to give way: Johnson's windpipe closed. He struggled desperately, but the aliens had his arms locked in a terrible vise that were their claws. He tried to breathe; he couldn't. He tried to stay conscious, just for one more minute, one more second, struggling against the terrible blackness and his choked-off screams.

Gunnery Sergeant Johnson tried everything in the book, but they didn't write the book for this.

He blacked out.

...

He woke.

You know when you wake from a really bad nightmare, but you're awake now, and it's okay?

Gunnery Sergeant Johnson drifted up from oblivion, totally lost, his face covered in gunk. He tried to wipe that shit off his face. He couldn't: his arms were pinned to the bulkhead he was stuck against. He tried to blink the shit out of his eyes. And that's when he found out that he wasn't in Kansas anymore. Gunny Sergeant Johnson woke from blackness into his own personal nightmare, complete with demons straight from the depths of hell.

"Shit!" he exclaimed. It wasn't a nightmare. This was as real as it got. There were no two ways about it: he was right and royally fucked.

But just saying that one word, and he realized how much his throat fucking hurt, like a son of a bitch! And just how parched he was.

"Water?" he pleaded in a whisper.

It came to this: all of Gunny Sergeant Johnson's plans and contingencies were reduced to him begging before the enemy. He was painfully aware of his state, and the humiliation of it stung like a slap to the face from Patricia McHenry in the cafeteria in front of his whole high school.

Everybody stared at him. He just stood there, ashamed. Just like now, so reduced, and aliens just staring at him.

"What is it saying?" One Arm asked Second.

Second replied quietly: "Nothing."

One Arm was confused at this response. "What?" she asked.

"It doesn't matter," Second said.

And as she said this, Gunny Sergeant Johnson jerked. It felt like he wanted to burp, but he couldn't, and then, suddenly, he started screaming, because his insides were literally being torn apart as the chest-burster implanted in his stomach hours ago began to claw and chew its way out of its host.

It grabbed ahold of Johnson's ribs and _tugged,_ snapping two of his ribs into his lungs. That's when Gunny Sergeant Johnson's screamed turned to gurgling cries, because he had no more air in his collapsed lung.

Johnson was drowning, again, but this time in his own blood. He fought, oh, he fought to somehow hang onto life. His body did everything it could to hold itself together, but his spasms only squeezed out blood and piss and shit and spit and snot all the faster, hastening his own end.

It wasn't a pretty sight to see, watching his own guts spill out of him as his body helped tear himself apart.

Death came quickly after that to him as the chest-burster exploded out of him and onto the deck plating. Instinct took over for it, and the larval Xenomorph scuttled into the nearest protected corner, looking for a ventilation shaft in which to hide.

It would be a bitch to find it later, ... that is: if it didn't have the need to feed soon.

As for Gunnery Sergeant Johnson, his death would be nothing that he thought it might be or could be. His death was to be billions of miles from home, with cold, dispassionate aliens watching him die. He didn't strike a blow against them, as he hoped, but, by dying, only increased their numbers.

He choked once, shuddered, and died.

* * *

 **A/N:** At boot camp "Taps" is played every night just before lights out.


	7. Fun

**Chapter summary:** Life as a new worker of the Hive is so much _fun!_ ... Yeah: 'fun.'

* * *

The larval form returned soon enough to feed. Growth and transformation occurs rapidly in the Xenomorph to fully-functioning adult, and with that rapid growth, with the constant molting of its soft outer shell, ... well, how could that be supported? Nothing comes from nothing, so the larva's hunger overcame its instinctual need to shy away from anything until it hardened into a fully-grown killing machine.

It returned to its food-source: its host.

Braving the other huge creatures present, it went right up to the remains of Gunny Sergeant Johnson and went for the richest source of energy a human had: his brain.

Imagine the calorie count of a quarter-pounder (or «un Hamburger Royale»). The human brain, weighing in at more than two pounds, or at least eight times the weight of one burger, and with the very high density of gray matter, makes for quite the power-lunch for a Xenomorph.

The little monster clambered up Gunny Sergeant's body and smashed right through his skull to get right to the good stuff. Then feast, it did!

And this is how a Xenomorph ate: ravenously, messily, greedily, and very, very aware of its surroundings. In its present state, smaller than a half-a-meter in height with a flexible, not hardened, outer shell more pliant like rubber, it knew it was very vulnerable. Certainly, it had a vicious bite, but to land a killing blow, a host would have to be stupid enough to lift the Xenomorph to its own head, and even then, from its small mouths, it would need to bite multiple times to land anything severe.

The most dangerous enemy to a Xenomorph was not a host, however: it would be another Xenomorph, and a fully mature one, like the three now observing it, could just pick it up, slam it down, and squash it underfoot without effort.

What kind of defense was possible against that? Babyish charm? No. Xenomorphs were not nurturing. The best defense against other Xenomorphs was to stay out of the way and to mature as quickly as possible. That's why the larval stage was a mere six cycles: the larval form hid and fed and grew as quickly as it could.

Until it could join into the hive a fully productive worker ... or fight its way free and try its luck elsewhere.

The success rate of going rogue was approximately zero percent.

'Approximately,' because there had been one exception: the queen herself had been a worker, and had rejected her own queen, her own hive, and it was all because of one frail, little human: Newt.

Freed from her own queen, the suppressive pheromones no longer were there to stop her development from an asexual worker to a queen that grew and grew until she was now an impressive seven meters, befitting a rogue queen, rival to the very hive she helped build from nothing.

This larval form didn't know all this, not at all. But it did know the hunger gnawing away at its insides, so it fed.

"Bring it to me," the Queen commanded, her voice reverberating throughout the ship.

Second sighed, but did her duty. It was always tough and tiresome work: the upbringing of the newest members of the hive. This was the shit job usually relegated to the lower workers, but there were none lower: just her and One Arm.

They all had to do their part: even if it were chasing down wild, bite-y little larvae.

Fast as lightning, Second launched itself at the body and the larval form, grabbing it by the back of the neck before its feeding mouths could disengage to bite back. Second pulled it from the body, and, grabbing the thigh, pulled the left leg clean off the corpse. She brought both to the Queen.

"Good!" the Queen exulted. Grabbing both presented gifts from Second, she immobilized the newest member of the hive in one claw and began feeding it Gunnery Sergeant Johnson's leg with the other. The larva, after a second's struggling hesitation, returned to feeding with gusto.

It did not know, nor did it care, that the Queen was imprinting it. Slowly but surely as it fed, it breathed in her Queen, impressed with the scent of the Queen as its leader, its all.

The larva made quick work of all that meat of Johnson's leg, bones and all. Waste not, want not, and the Xenomorph was a very efficient consumer of energy, allocating every joule to some end.

So unlike humans.

The foot was the least fun, or the least productive, part of the leg that the larva ate, but eat it it did. It was so hungry! Or, more correctly, so full now, but so driven to eat, and to grow and to grow, and to grow. The biological imperative drove the larva in its single-minded purpose.

Its meal done, the Queen loosened her grip. The larva bit the Queen's claw, in spite, and scuttled off to the nearest ventilation shaft as the Queen howled in rage.

It was a fake howl: the Queen didn't even feel a twinge from the underdeveloped jaws, but it was coded into the Queen just as the need to feed was coded into the larva: everything was dedicated to the continuance of a thriving, terrifying, deadly hive.

"So," the Queen declared, pleased, "it begins."

...

Training the newest member of the hive for Second and One Arm was ... 'fun.'

'fun,' adj.: see _sucks_.

'Fun' as it was, and inasmuch it took them away from all their other duties, it was a thing that the Second and One Arm needed to do, the Queen monitoring everything they did.

Combat/play, when to work, when to rest, when to tend, the first week after the larval form had quickly grown into fully mature Xenomorph were hard, and for all the members of the hive.

"Something's wrong with it," the Queen remarked to Second after the newest member went to its rest cycle.

"Uh," Second replied noncommittally.

"Why is it so small?" the Queen demanded.

At just over two meters, the 'runt' wasn't small ... for a human. But it wasn't being measured by human-standards.

And, to the point, it was small.

Second pondered this, then offered: "The gravity here on ship is twice that of that rock we abandoned, maybe it's-... more compact?"

"'Compact'?" the Queen hissed, not satisfied. "So it should be twice as strong, then? ... or twice as fast?"

"Uh," was Second's intelligent reply.

The runt was neither stronger nor faster than her sisters. In fact, she was the opposite: both slower and much weaker, laughably so when compared to Second.

But neither Second nor the Queen were laughing now: to both, this was a very serious issue. Second was wondering if her training was failing her Queen, somehow.

For Second, a displeased Queen was not something she needed to deal with.

The Queen, for her part, was wondering, since this was her first hatchling, did she do something wrong? She wasn't hatched as a queen, herself, fed Royal Jelly from the larval state, but instead transformed from a worker to Queen when freed from her own Queen's dominance.

Her own Queen had ordered Newt be implanted, and 'First' as she was known, did something incomprehensible for a worker: instead of taking Newt to the incubation chamber as commanded, she instead escaped the hive to LV-624's surface, and then started eating... and eating, .. and eating.

Her Queen's pheromone inhibitors no longer affected First, who was now no longer a repressed little obedient worker, but a fully-grown Queen, in her own right, and now an enemy to the very hive she had created, human by implanted human.

So since she was 'unnaturally' selected to be Queen of her own Hive, were the workers she produced to be small and ineffectual like the runt? Would they even be able to take on humans one-on-one?

This was very worrisome, indeed!

So, the Queen was pensive, and for a Xenomorph, 'pensive' is neither a natural nor welcome state.

And so the Queen was angry.

"Find something good to tell me about this hatchling, Second," the Queen snarled a dismissal.

"Yes, my Queen," Second acquiesced and backed away to her cowl, leaving her Queen to stew in her own 'thoughts.'

 _Sometimes it's best just to leave the Queen be,_ Second though as sleep took her.

...

"Again!" Second commanded.

The runt threw herself at Second, claws extended, mouths parted to rip and to rend.

Second's claw flashed out and knocked the runt away before she was within even a meter's distance from Second.

The runt slammed into the bulkhead, ... hard. She squealed in dismay.

"Again!" Second commanded, mercilessly.

The runt, stunned, shook off the miasma of pain circling her like thick fog, and charged her elder, again, claws out to strike. She successfully ducked under Second's haymaker and rocketed up to snap through Second's exposed neck.

Instead, Second's other arm came right up, grabbing the runt by the neck, shoving her up, then slamming her down, ... hard, into the deck.

The whole ship seemed to shake with the blow. The runt squealed in dismay, furious at being so easily tricked.

 _"What are you doing?"_ Second screamed down at her pinned opponent. "Did I tell you you could stop? You fight or you die! You fight until you die!"

Second flung the Runt from her in disgust.

 _Thoom!_ The bulkhead had another new dent where the runt's body, a missile, connected with it.

 _"Take over!"_ Second snarled at One Arm, and she stalked from training area to make her report to the Queen.

"On it!" One Arm shouted at Second's retreating back, emoting encouragement to her sister, as if to say: _Don't worry, I'll make good with this one; I've handled the like before._

One Arm had trained many new hatchlings. This one would be a challenge, yes, but One Arm liked a challenge.

Second didn't.

...

"Give me some good news," the Queen growled softly to Second's lowered dome.

Second remained silent, facing her Queen.

"Anything?" the Queen demanded.

Nothing from Second.

"Fuck," the Queen muttered, dispirited.

"This is my fau-..." Second began.

"Second," the Queen snarled, "just shut the fuck up."

Rage was boiling over in the Queen, and she was afraid of taking it out on Second, her most trusted advisor, on the ship, on the whole cursed solar system. This was not the time to be rash for the Queen.

But it never was.

She hated being Queen, being responsible for her whole Hive. In fact, she was responsible for her whole species now, as every encounter with the humans had ended up with catastrophic losses for every hive, but she did not know this fact, and knowing it wouldn't have helped any, anyway.

No, she wanted to act, to do something reckless and impulsive, but instead she was forced to sit here and watch others do her bidding, and not the way she would do it, either, if it were up to her. She hated this sitting and waiting, and that's all a Queen ever did.

"How many cycles has it been since it hatched, Second?" the Queen asked quietly.

"Ninety-three cycles, my Queen," Second replied.

"Ninety-three cycles," the Queen echoed, "and it's won how many matches against you? against One Arm?"

Second was silent.

"Second?" the Queen demanded.

"Not one of them, my Queen," Second admitted.

"Not ..."

The Queen was stunned by this fact. Not even one? That was ... a worker could win squabbles, could lose squabbles. Hell, two workers bump into each other and the whole hive would be humming with snapping, snarling workers as a confrontation escalated.

But losing every single encounter?

"Fuck," the Queen muttered.

The Queen mulled over this situation. How the _fuck_ were they going to take on a planet if this were the first of the new wave of workers? What if they were all like this?

"How many cycles until we reach the planet again?" she asked.

"More than nine hundred cycles still to go, my Queen," Second replied.

 _"FUCK!"_ the Queen screamed. _"Why is this taking so damn long?"_

Second just let her Queen scream. Explaining things wouldn't help.

The Queen tapped her chest plating, a nervous tic of hers.

"My Queen, ..." Second began.

"Shut up," the Queen snapped testily. "I'm thinking!"

 _'Wow, she's thinking,'_ Second thought. _'Hooray for us!'_

Second hated it when the Queen got to thinking: the Queen thinking meant that they were going to storm the Hive, and all die, or storm a human vessel, and _mostly_ all die.

"How is the hatchling doing in its duties?" the Queen asked.

Second shrugged an _'eh,'_ back to the Queen. There was really nothing to distinguish it as outstanding out here in space: one worked and tended on a ship that took care of itself.

The Queen resumed tapping her chest-plating.

Then she came to a decision. "Fuck it," she said. "We have ... two other humans in cryo?"

"Yes, my Queen."

"Okay," the Queen said, "Uh, does the hatchling show any signs of ... brilliance?"

Second just kept her dome to the deck, trying not to laugh. The question was hilarious to Second, because the runt was just ... young. Her attacks were laughably transparent, and 'brilliance'? She showed eagerness, yes, but impulsiveness. The runt was young, and nothing else.

"Anyway," the Queen continued, ignoring Second's constrained twitches. "You are going to teach the young one how to pilot this vessel."

"Uh ..." Second offered, stunned. "We are going somewhere else now?"

"No, stupid!" the Queen retorted angrily. "One of us has to ensure we land on the planet, intact, even in any emergency that'll be sure to happen."

"... but you want the hatchling to do that?" Second countered incredulously.

"Yes, I do," the Queen said firmly, "for I have plans for you and for Eighth." The Queen still referred to One Arm as her Eighth. "So the runt has nine hundred cycles to become the best damn pilot this vessel will ever have, and _you,_ Second, my little alien tech-genius, will make sure that she is. Do you understand me?"

Second sighed. Her wretched life just kept getting better and better, didn't it! "Yes, my Queen."

"And get the other two in here, _now!"_ the Queen ordered. "I was going to wait a bit, well ... a _lot_ longer, closer to planetfall, for this, but I'm bored as fuck. We're going to see how the hatching holds her own, but it's not going to be play, not this time."

"Uh, ..." Second offered, not liking the sound of where this was going.

"Now, Second," the Queen ordered.

Second's tail swished in annoyance. "Yes, my Queen," she snarled dutifully, and backed out of the mess deck.

...

Her three subjects arrayed before her, the Queen looked over her Hive.

What a sorry lot it was, she thought disparagingly. Second was a prize, but could she use her in combat? No! Second's first duty was to guard her Queen. That left One Arm and a runt.

To take on a whole planet.

 _Not good,_ the Queen thought darkly.

"We are going to have a little ... fun," the Queen announced. "You," she directed to the runt, "you've had enough time playing with your sisters, now you are going to go up against something for real: your first human opponent, their warrior, but this time: fully armed, and fully prepared for battle."

The runt gasped, beside herself with joy. _At last!_ she crowed.

One Arm burst out in dismay: "My Queen! This little one will not last two seconds against their warrior, she will ..."

"Oh," the runt interrupted her elder, squealing gleefully. "I will! I will take it down! I will show ..."

 _"SHUT UP!"_ all three screamed at her as one.

The runt nearly fell over in surprise, stunned into silence.

"She won't even last two seconds," the Queen agreed with One Arm, "that is why _you_ are to go with her and instruct her in this engagement every step of the way. _You_ are to present the human to _me,_ disarmed, but whole and unharmed, at which point ..."

"Will it be implanted?" the runt jumped in again, excited. "Will it host a new member to strengthen our mighty Hive?"

Stony silence greeted her.

She shut up again.

"Listen, little one," the Queen growled softly, "you will be _lucky_ to be here in that moment, but only if you listen to every single word of your sister and you obey her without question. You don't think, you don't suggest, you don't _fucking breathe_ without her say-so. You don't move in on the human, unless your sister so orders, otherwise you will be _lucky_ if the human kills you, and kills you so fucking fast you won't even have time to wonder how the fuck she just killed you. Your tail so much as twitches without your sister's permission, you'll fucking face me. Clear?"

"Yes, my Queen," the runt squeaked.

"You," the Queen turned on One Arm. "Revive the warrior. Let it arm itself. Show me you can take her down on her own vessel and on her own terms. Do _not_ disappoint me."

"Do you need six cycles to prepa-..." One Arm began.

"Now," the Queen said. "Revive her _now."_

"Yes, my Queen," One Arm complied, not understanding.

It wasn't One Arm's role to understand; her role was to obey.

"Let's do this," she said grimly to the runt.

"Yes!" the runt said. "You'll see! I'll be good! This'll be fun!"

One Arm observed the runt, vibrating in place: a happy, little puppy dog.

One Arm just wagged her head in disgust. "Yeah," she said. "It'll be ... 'fun,' all right."

But inside, she cursed bitterly as she took the runt with her to cryo.

The little shit had no idea what she was about to go up against.


	8. Prize

**Chapter Summary:** What do you do when you awake from cryo on an infested ship? Chew gum and kick alien ass, that's what you do! ... and Corporal Torres is all out of bubble gum.

* * *

 _"Revival process complete in 3... 2... 1... now."_

Corporal Maria Teresa Bernadette Torres y Sorienté rolled out of her casket onto the deck and promptly puked her guts out. God, cryo was the worst part of any detachment.

But then, wiping the gunk from her eyes, she quickly got her bearings.

 _Shit,_ she thought as she took inventory. Two sealed caskets, life-signs nominal in cryo. Gunny's casket was opened, and all the other ones, the rest of the squad, ... unused. She counted them, just to be sure: twelve empty caskets.

She remembered fighting the bugs, putting rounds into them, but then they just overwhelmed her. She saw the squad's formation disintegrate under the onslaught as she was trampled underfoot. She didn't remember anything after that, but it sure as shooting didn't look like they were winning.

And, to top it off, there was a smell.

That is, besides her puke on the deck.

There was a definite smell of bug.

 _Shit,_ she thought again.

"Gunny!" she shouted. "Gunny, are you there? Can you hear me? Because now would be a really good time to come in, guns blazing! _You out there, Gunny? You hear me?"_

She knew she was taking a big risk here, but, _fuck it!_ this was an emerging situation. If there were bugs, she was fucked, no two ways about it, and they'd know she was defrosted, so if Gunny was on the move, him knowing another marine was on the field might tip the scales.

Or it might distract the bugs.

Or ... _something!_ God damn it!

But ... nothing.

Her voice in the emptiness echoed back to her.

Corporal Torres collected herself, picking herself up off the deck and grabbing a robe, wrapping it about herself and those medical _tsinelas_ for her feet. No sense running about the ship naked, trying to ascertain the state of things.

"Computer," she rapped out, sitting up on her haunches, "ship and crew status. Stat!"

"No surviving military personnel beside yourself, Corporal Torres. One survivor from the scientific team, Dr. Hartmann-Fitzhugh, is currently in cryo."

 _Great!_ Corporal Torres thought bitterly. _Gunny didn't make it!_

That, and a scientist? More of a liability defrosted than not.

She examined the other occupied casket.

"Who is this?" she demanded.

"Unknown," the computer replied.

"I thought all the colonists were dead," Torres mused.

"Apparently, you thought wrongly," the computer remarked dryly.

"Huh," Torres let this jab pass. She didn't have time to spar with the shipboard systems, and didn't give a fuck if they were proud they could emote humor. "How the fuck did she slip past the bugs to hop into a tube and ..."

Torres stopped, realization dawning on her.

"She didn't, did she," she stated. "The bugs put her in here, like me and the others."

The computer didn't respond.

"Why?" Torres demanded.

"Unknown," the computer responded. "Or, for the same reason they put you into cryo."

"Which is why?" she asked.

"Unknown," the computer replied.

Torres grimaced. "That's helpful."

She looked around. It was quiet.

Another thought struck her. "Is the colonist implanted?"

"Negative," the computer replied.

"You sure?"

"Affirmative."

Torres wasn't so sure about that. "What about me, or the doc? Are we implanted?"

"Negative."

"But that's the general idea, right?" she asked.

"Unknown," the computer replied coolly.

"What happened to Gunny?"

"Gunnery Sergeant Johnson was revived thirty-one days ago and implanted. He died hours after from massive organ failure when the implanted egg advanced to the larval form, consuming and exiting his body."

Torres nodded, grimacing. "Yeah, thought so. Thanks for telling me," she spat bitterly. "How many bugs on board now?"

"There are _kkkrrrrzzzz-tck..."_

The lights went out throughout the ship. The emergency deck lighting came up immediately, casting long shadows and an eerie pall over everything.

 _"Shit!"_ Torres hit the deck on hands and knees and cast about her, quickly. No sign of movement on the cryo deck, but she knew now that she had to act quickly! This was bug protocol 101: cut the power, then move in.

Bugs were predicable as fuck, in their own way.

She scanned the life signs of the two remaining survivors. Both were healthy, ... both were liabilities: bugs in the making or deadweight and in the way. But she had only two options with them: revive them now, or leave them in cryo. There was no way for her to cut power to life-support as it was an essential system. The only way to take them out now would be to destroy their caskets or put a bullet in their heads. Or both.

But this wasn't an immediate concern for Torres. If there were lots of bugs, two more for her to fight wouldn't matter, besides it would take hours to incubate new bugs, according to the computer. If there were only a few bugs, if Torres could get armed up (a long shot, yes), then maybe she could take them out and save these two, anyway.

Again, the colonist and the doc weren't her number one priority.

Number one priority was to get armored up; number two: kill her way to the bridge and find out where the hell they were going. Going home? If so, then activate the self-destruct and blow this ship to hell.

Of course, the armory wasn't right by cryo. Of course it wasn't. Somebody gets defrosted and snaps? You don't want an assault rifle in easy reach of a disorientated marine, now do you?

Corporal Torres would have to play hide-n-seek with how many bugs? And go down two decks and half-way across the ship to reach the armory.

The locked armory.

 _Shit!_

Well, one problem at a time, and Torres knew she was fucked unarmed, so this was her best chance.

Stealthily, quickly, avoiding open areas, she crawled to the ATD, the Air-tight door, and gazed through the porthole.

The passageway was dimly lit with the emergency deck lighting, but looked clear. There appeared to be no sign of movement.

 _Here we go!_ She gritted her teeth with determination and flipped the manual override on the door, and rolled the lock open, careful to be as quiet as possible.

A quick scan of all corners of the passageway, and Corporal Torres was through the door and moving quickly and quietly toward the down-ladder at the end of the passage.

...

One Arm and the runt observed Corporal Torres from the crawlspace directly beneath the passage as she furtively padded above them.

After she had passed and slid down the ladder into the next passage two decks below, the Runt felt it was safe to speak.

"Why does it make so much noise when it moves?" she asked One Arm.

One Arm was already in motion, however, tracking her target. "For a human," she called back quietly, "that was quiet."

This shocked the runt. "How ... but ... why is it running out in the open like that? Why would it expose itself from all directions, and above and below? Doesn't it know it's vulnerable to attack at any point?"

One Arm didn't reply. Corporal Torres had reached the hangar deck and was sprinting a steady fifteen kilometers per hour, a good clip – for a human – across the deck, her _tsinelas_ making a _flip-flip-flip_ sound as she ran, loud reports in the silence of the ship. Nothing for it but to reach the armory and pray that no bugs were waiting for her there. If they were, it was evade and adapt. If not ...

Torres reached the armory door, unknowingly observed by the two tracking her closely, silently. She flipped the manual override, and muttered an exultant _"fuck yeah!"_ when the lock status indicator went from red to green. The armory door had no portal, so she rolled the lock fast, shoved the door open hard and dive-rolled into the armory checking all corners.

 _"YES!"_ she shouted. The armory was deserted, ... of people and bugs, that is.

It had a full load-out.

She slammed the door closed – _KLANG!_ it boomed throughout the hangar deck – and reengaged the lock. It cycled closed and the indicator went from green to red: locked.

Corporal Torres heaved a huge sigh of relief and shrugged the built-up tension off her shoulders.

She looked about herself with determination. "Let's fucking do this," she snarled to the room. Then, throwing on a pair of fatigues, she reached for the kevlar vest.

...

"So," the runt offered, "when it crawls out from hiding in the weapons chamber, that's when we charge it?"

Everything the human had done so far only suggested to the runt that this would be the easiest task to complete: simply walk right up to the human and take it to the Queen. What could be simpler than that?

One Arm _tsk_ ed. "That kind of thinking will get you dead in an instant! This human is alone and isolated, but do you think cornering it makes it less dangerous?"

The runt shrugged: "That's worked really well against me, ..." she began.

"That's because you're stupid and small!" One Arm snapped impatiently.

"And the human is even stupider and smaller!" the runt hissed back angrily.

One Arm snorted, her teeth bared from her outer mouth.

"Well, it is!" the runt retorted, but now feeling a little defensive. "And it's just all ... soft tissue! I could take it with just one claw ... um ... I mean: and you could, too!"

One Arm chuckled. "I could take _you_ with one claw, but, what's your brilliant plan? We charge straight in and overwhelm it?"

 _"Yes!"_ This seemed patently obvious to the runt.

"And how many times has that worked for you so far, little one?" One Arm chided.

"But it's different against you and Second!" the runt whined. And it was: they were, clearly, a superior force: One Arm was bigger and more cunning, and Second was huge and just so fast!

And both were Xenomorphs of the hive: armed to the teeth; _literally!_ This little human was so loud and so slow and so ... obvious in its movements.

Taking it down would be embarrassingly easy.

"And it's going to be very different against this human," One Arm countered. "You saw it unarmed, but now that it's equipped itself, it'll be quite a formidable opponent. These humans don't have our abilities nor strength nor speed nor exoskeletal protection, but they have something much more dangerous."

"What is that?" the runt asked incredulously.

"They have brains," One Arm said.

 _"Pfft,_ 'brains'?" the runt snorted. "What tactical advantage does that give them in combat?"

One Arm paused. "Well, for one," she said, "this little warrior didn't charge right at us to be torn to shreds by our claws, now did it?"

"So, it cowers and runs from us," the runt was unimpressed, "just as any host creature does, no?" The runt stomped in impatience. "I'm done with this lesson. I say we tear through the door and bring this creature to the Queen, _now!_ as she commanded. All you do is talk!"

"No," said One Arm, "the Queen gave _me_ this task. You do as _I_ say, as the Queen commanded. We will take this human down. It won't be easy, but if you follow my command, you will live to see this task through. If you don't, you will die. It's that simple."

The runt snarled in rage, but before she could retort the armory door slammed open – _KLANG!_ – echoing throughout the ship.

 _"COME AND GET SOME, YOU FUCKING BUGS! I'M LOCKED AND LOADED!"_ Corporal Torres was armed to the teeth, assault rifle in hand, and to punctuate her point, she sprayed a five-round burst in an arc in front of her.

One of the rounds ricocheted near the aliens. Torres did not know this: she didn't see them, but the round _ping_ ed as it flew past them.

"What was that?" the runt asked, taken aback.

You'll have to forgive her: it was the first time a weapon was discharged near her... She'd get used to it, soon enough.

"That," said One Arm, "was one of the rounds from their projectile weapons. Their bodies aren't weapons, so they use their brains to build tools and weapons as extension of their bodies. Scared now?"

"No," the runt hissed.

"Well, then, you're stupid," One Arm _tsk_ ed. "You charge in now, fearlessly, you'll get mowed down like she mowed down three of my sisters and tore off my arm. This human gets a lock on you, you're dead, so follow my lead and we'll take it down. Understand?"

The runt spit, her tail swishing.

One Arm growled. That wasn't a 'yes,' but it was the best she could expect from this newborn.

"Priority one, always: we protect the Queen, so lead the human away from the mess deck. _Always!_ Priority two: the task, so let's get to work on that. Stay right here, I'll worry her flank and we'll wear her down. Do not attack until my say-so, and do not attack frontally, or you're dead. Got me?"

"Yes!" the runt spit, acid flowing through her body. She was quivering with the need to strike.

 _"Stay here_ until my command!" One Arm hissed, and with that she was in motion.

 _"Hey, fucks! I'm right here!"_ Torres shouted, then bringing her fingers up to her lips, she blew a wolf whistle, long and loud.

The runt winced, the sound vibrating through her dome. _Fuck! These humans were loud and annoying!_ She thought.

One Arm ignored the jeer, instead, she was a shadow flitting in shadows, racing, positioning herself away from the runt and further into the hangar deck. Then jerking hard right, she let out a scream and bore straight at the human, in complete disregard of her own instructions to the runt. She was a good thirty meters from the human on her right flank, and a complete 180° from where the runt was positioned now.

Torres, surprised by the scream turned on her assailing and her mouth widened and a joyous, feral snarl of recognition.

"You again?" she screamed. "Didn't get enough last time? Let's dance, motherfucker!"

She brought her assault rifle to bear and let off a quick 5-round blast right at the bug, but One Arm was expecting this, she jerked hard right again, perpendicular to her charge and rocketed off. Torres tracked the bug, firing burst after burst at the alien, but One Arm refused to run in a straight line nor stay on the deck! She used the standing equipment, ducked behind the drop-ship, scaled the bulkhead, then disappeared up the ladder, high-tailing out of the hangar bay.

 _"Come back here, you chickenshit motherfucker!"_ Torres screamed and gave pursuit, ejecting the spent clip and reloading in one smooth, well-practiced motion.

Sixty rounds had been spent in that exchange, and shell casings littered the deck at her feet as she ran.

One Arm screamed to the runt. _"Now!_ Brush her flank, but keep running! Do not engage! Go!"

The runt screamed with joy and launched herself at the human. Torres was still a good ten meters from the ladder in pursuit of One Arm when she heard the sound, skidded to an abrupt stop and twisted hard to her right.

"You brought a friend? Well, I got some for you, too!" With that, she didn't have sight on her new attacker, but she fired toward the general direction of the sound: two tight five-round bursts.

The runt, planning for a glancing strike, was, stupidly, running right into Torres' line of fire, thinking she could replicate One Arm's tactic without the experience that One Arm had to back up her move.

Luckily for her, One Arm had turned-tail in her retreat, was launching herself down the ladder, but then used it to push herself off it and _smack_ into the runt, _hard,_ deflecting them both from the rounds whizzing around them.

 _"EVADE!"_ One Arm screamed as they careened across the hangar. One Arm summersaulted, landed on all three of her remaining claws, cat-like, and rocketed away. The runt followed her.

 _"No, you idiot!"_ One Arm screamed in frustration. _"The other way!_ Split its focus and divide its attention!" Training under fire _sucks!_ One Arm reflected furiously as she ran.

"Oh!" The runt replied stupidly, skidding to a halt in her tracks and reversed direction. This actually saved her from getting riddled with rounds, a burst from Corporal Torres' assault rifle peppered the air right in front of the runt. If she had kept going and followed One Arm, she would have been riddled with holes.

Corporal Torres' attention was split, but she focused on one problem at a time, in this case, the more visible one: she followed the runt with burst after burst of assault rounds, then, the clip exhausted, she switched out clips smoothly, not even looking at her weapon or the ammo belt as she reloaded.

But now, both aliens were out of sight.

Corporal Torres backed quickly to the ladder and scanned the hangar deck.

Nothing.

 _Shit!_ she thought, then bore down and assessed her situation.

"Just two of you, then?" she shouted into to bay, "or do you have any more friends I have to deal with?"

Torres was reasonably certain it was just the two. The bugs always swarmed in numbers, attacking in a wave to overwhelm the opponent. If there was just one, it would wait for a quick, decisive kill, so it wasn't one, obviously, but if there were only two bugs on the ship, if she played it right, she could actually save the ship and the ones remaining in cryo. If there were more than two, then they'd all be here to try to overwhelm her.

 _Just two, then,_ Torres thought to herself. Her eyes scanned the hangar deck and she counted clips. She was starting her third, and she had three more in her belt. She could do this if she played it cool and let them come to her.

The Aliens, for their part had regrouped.

One Arm: "So, did you hear how many rounds it fires before it reloads?"

"No," said the runt.

One Arm _tsk_ ed. "You have to count! It was twelve bursts, then the reload. How long does it take for it to reload?"

"Um ..." the runt began.

"Two-point-seven seconds," One Arm interjected quickly. "Don't _'umm'_ it, know it cold, because that is our window: two-point-seven seconds at the reload. Now, let's do this again. You stay, I go. Ready?"

"Yes," the runt said sullenly.

"Okay, wait for my signal," One Arm commanded, then launched herself away from both the runt and the human.

Torres was debating if she should make her way back to the armory and load up there or even hole up, but then would they starve her out? Or wait for her to fall asleep, even for just a second?

Her question was answered by the screeching bellow of One Arm. She didn't charge the human this time, but launched herself from cover to cover, flanking Torres.

Torres sighted along the barrel of her rifle, but held her fire: whether it was the effects of cryo, or it was this particular bug, she didn't know, but she didn't like firing rounds to no effect.

Behind the drop-ship, One Arm cursed. _"Fuck!_ It has discerned our ploy! _Fuck!"_

She didn't like the human knowing her current position, as it limited her options.

"Okay," she called out, making a decision. "I'm going to break cover and try to draw its fire. At the same time, you launch yourself at it, but don't fucking scream out your presence this time, okay?"

The runt ground her teeth, insulted.

 _"Fucking acknowledge my order!"_ One Arm screamed in frustration.

"Okay, I fucking got it!" the runt screamed right back, very much announcing her position to Torres, who trained her rifle in that direction.

 _"Oh, for fuck's sake!"_ One Arm grumbled, then, louder, but not in human hearing. "Never-fucking-mind! Stay put for now; I fucking got this!"

With that, One Arm launched herself over the top of the drop-ship, right toward the human, screaming as she flew at her target.

Torres snapped her aim back quickly, but her focus was now divided between the charging enemy ahead of her, and the unseen bug who had screamed to her right, but ODTAAT – "One Damn Thing At A Time" – Torres leveled her rifle at the charging assailant and let out one burst, then another.

One Arm was expecting this, but her own frustration had gotten the better of her. One round from the first burst, then, from the second burst, another round tore into her. They were glancing blows, but imagine a 'glancing blow' from a hammer punching into your side and chest, and you get the idea. One Arm screamed in rage, twisted mid-air, and launched herself away, scampering up the bulkhead, then, crawling along overhead, she skittered and landed right back where she had started: under good cover by the drop-ship.

All the while Torres fired burst after burst, trying, but failing, to wing that bug but good!

 _"Fuck!"_ One Arm screamed furiously from behind the drop-ship. This was not a good tactical move at all. Acid dripped from the wounds onto the deck grating, hissing evilly as it ate into the metal. One Arm spat into her wounds, sealing them off, as the acid that was her blood ate away at the rounds embedded in her.

"Ha, ha, ha!" Torres shouted in the bug's direction. "That gave you something to think about, didn't it! C'mon and try that again! I got more for ya right here!"

Torres, the ladder to her back, definitely had the tactical advantage, and even though her attention was split, she knew where the bugs were, which was another huge advantage to her, as the bugs always had surprise on their side.

 _Not this time!_ Torres thought with grim satisfaction.

"Please tell me you counted bursts this time!" One Arm called out to the runt.

"I did," the runt replied with confidence this time. "It fired seven bursts."

"Correct," One Arm said. "So, now we have to make it fire five more bursts, then we charge and disarm it. Got it?"

"Got it," the runt replied.

"Good," One Arm said. "I'll go first."

Charging the human was now too predictable, but what to do? One Arm pushed against the drop-ship, but it was just too massive for her to budge. She cast about her, scanning for something to use, settling for the siding of the fueling station by the drop-ship. She ripped it out and dug her claw into it, making a rudimentary shield, providing protection over less than a quarter of her body, but a shield, nonetheless.

This was the first time a Xenomorph was improvising and using tools against a human, but One Arm didn't have time to wax philosophical about her own species development here. She leapt around the tail of the drop-ship and charged right at the human, again.

 _Stupid bugs,_ Torres thought disdainfully, but the emergency deck lighting glinted off something odd. Torres aimed and pressed the trigger, firing full-auto. The armor-piercing rounds tore through the improvised shield, but expending their energy and deflecting them, very slightly as they did.

 _Click-click-click!_ The chamber of the assault rifle was empty, and the bug, heretofore zig-zagging about the hangar deck, was bearing right down on Torres.

 _"SHIT!"_ Torres screamed. No time to reload, and this was transitioning to up-close and personal: the bugs' sweet-spot. Torres ripped a frag grenade from her vest and pulled the pin: she was going bye-bye, but she was going to take this motherfucking bug with her!

 _"See you in hell, motherfucker!"_ Torres screamed.

At the same time, One Arm screamed, too: _"FUCK!"_ she raged, for she knew the sound of the grenade pin very well. If she dodged, she'd be pieces smeared all over the hangar deck's bulkheads, so, instead, she barreled right in and with her left claw, her one remaining claw, grabbed Torres' hand holding the grenade and closed her claw tightly around the human's hand.

"What the ..." Torres gasped, but was quickly jerked forward, _hard,_ dislocating her right shoulder, spun around and into the alien's embrace. Torres' right arm, along with the alien's left arm pinned her to the alien which then immediately wrapped its right stump around Torres' belly, immobilizing Torres.

"Lemme go! Lemme go!" Torres screamed and struggled, trying to squirm out of the alien's grasp, but the alien held tight.

"We have a major fucking problem!" One Arm shouted out to the runt. "Get out here, now, and ..."

Torres, continuing to struggle, snapped her left arm to her holster and pulled out her pistol, then, releasing the safety, shoved the muzzle into the alien's side and pulled the trigger.

 _BANG! BANG! BANG!_

One Arm screamed in agony. These were not glancing blows, but rounds fired at point-blank range, and they hurt like a motherfucker.

 _"Fucking..."_ One Arm screamed and twisted. The runt, alarmed, galloped into view.

 _BANG!_ Another round slammed into One Arm's side, a flesh wound that hurt One Arm no less.

 _"Fucking..."_ One Arm screamed again.

 _BANG!_ Torres pulled the trigger again, trying to force the alien to let her go, so she could take out both bugs now with her grenade.

"What do I ..." the runt shouted, confused.

 _"Fucking, ..."_ One Arm finally did something. The fucking human was not only inflicting severe pain to One Arm, but it was endangering itself with the acid not just dripping but spraying out of One Arm's wounds. Maintaining her grip on the grenade hand, she spun the human by her dislocated arm away from her then slammed her against the bulkhead, hard.

 _BANG! BANG!_ Two shots fired wild into the hangar as Torres fought to maintain ahold of her weapon, ignore the pain, and keep her bearings.

To her credit, she did all three.

This time.

One Arm pulled the human off the bulkhead, hard, and then, continuing the arc, slammed her, hard, face-first into the bulkhead again.

 _"Motherfucking, ..."_ One Arm screamed.

The breath left Torres in a whoosh and she saw stars, but she held onto her pistol as her life-line, knowing she was dead without it. Since she had lost her assault rifle in the scuffle, she had her knife, but the pistol and the grenades were really all she could use against these things. She didn't squeeze off another round, because she didn't even know she had full pressure on the trigger already.

She didn't have time to realize this, however, because the bug reversed spin, once again, and slammed Torres, hard, her back against the bulkhead, one more time.

That did it. Everything went dark for Torres and the pistol fell to the deck-plating through nerveless fingers.

Torres was out.

 _"... fucking drop the fucking weapon!"_ One Arm screamed in agony at the human, her senses overcome by rage.

One Arm held the limp human up and away from her bleeding self. Acid oozed and sprayed from vicious wounds as she swayed in place, critically injured.

She turned her attention to the runt. "Now," she said calmly, "we have a problem."

The runt regarded One Arm, awed.

"I'm holding in my claw one of the humans' balls that explodes very quickly after it's let go. We can't let it explode near us or near the human, because it will surely blow us to bits. So, this is what I'm going to do: I'm going loosen my grip and allow the ball to drop. Here's what you're going to do: you're going to kick it under their drop-ship, which will shield us from the explosion. Do you understand."

One Arm didn't ask a question, more like demand the runt's understanding.

"Yes," the runt said.

"Then tell me, plainly, what's going to happen," One Arm said.

"You're going to let the ball drop, and I'm going to kick it under their drop-ship," the runt repeated.

"Good," One Arm said. "Ready?"

"Yes," the runt said.

"Okay, let's fucking do this," One Arm said. She dragged the limp human closer to the drop-ship, had the runt take up position, then said: "Now!"

She shifted her grip to the human's wrist, and the grenade dropped to the deck.

The runt kicked the grenade, instantly.

Hard.

The grenade rocketed to the drop-ship, but then bounced off the hull and headed right back toward them.

"Um, ..." the runt said.

At the same time, One Arm slammed herself against the runt, knocking them both down, the flung the human over the runt, double-shielding her from the blast as the grenade exploded, midair, meters from them, ... _not_ shielded from them by the drop-ship.

Shrapnel from the grenade peppered One Arm's back and spines, opening more wounds as acid sputtered and hissed angrily against the deck-plating.

One Arm and the runt breathed in silence, the echo of the explosion lancing through their domes worse than a migrate headache.

"I don't fucking believe it," One Arm whispered. "I just don't ... _fucking_ believe it."

Wearily, she dragged herself to her feet, and, grabbing the human by the scruff of the neck, picked it up and started an unsteady trek toward the mess deck.

"Uh," the runt offered, "would you like me to take the human and ..."

"Would you, _please,"_ One Arm snarled as she plodded forward, "just shut the fuck up! You've done enough damage already, thanks!"

 _"So_ glad I could help!" the runt whispered bitterly, mostly to herself, as she followed along behind.

...

By the _long_ time it took them to reach the mess deck, the human had revived. Her dislocated right arm was lifeless, but she still tried to struggle free of One Arm's iron grip about her neck.

No luck there. So, with her left hand, she pulled her knife and stabbed it into one of One Arm's wounds.

The acid ate into the blade, and One Arm just knocked it out of her wound with the stump of her right arm and then kicked it away. It was like she didn't even notice being stabbed. She had already passed the level of pain that she could endure, so she was now just floating in an euphoria, running only on the fumes of her will.

"Why won't you just fucking _die?"_ Torres finally screamed in frustration.

This, One Arm ignored, too.

They entered the mess deck.

"Holy fucking shit!" Torres exclaimed on seeing the huge monster arrayed at the center of a web of alien slime covering what used to be the mess deck.

"MY QUEEN!" One Arm bellowed. "I ... PRESENT YOU THIS ..."

One Arm listed to one side, dragging the human with her. "THIS ... HUM-HUMAN AS Y-YOU ... COM-..."

With that, One Arm collapsed heavily onto the mess deck, still holding her prize securely about the neck. Torres was pulled down in a heap onto One Arm's good side, as the acid oozed very slowly out of One Arm's wounds onto the deck plating.

The Queen bent over her subject and her prize, breathing on both, her dome as long as the human.

"Well done, faithful servant," she said to One Arm. "Rest well-earned from your task."

But One Arm did not hear her Queen.

One Arm was not breathing, and the flow of acid from her wounds had stopped.


	9. Drowning

**Chapter Summary:** "Drowning, in the sea of love, where everyone would love to drown..." Do you know what it is to drown, the absolute terror of it? Corporal Torres does. But worse: she knew that this just might not be the end of it. To die in the arms of an alien, bearing one? What could be worse than that?

* * *

Drowning.

Corporal Torres was drowning. After the bug grabbed her, the monster started spewing shit out of its mouth: slime, whatever, but it smelled like shit. No, worse: it smelled like bug-shit. But it didn't stop. It was a deluge of bug-puke and it started covering the bug, but since the bug had a death grip on Corporal Torres, it started covering her, too.

And she was drowning in it, because it didn't run off her, but stayed: sealing her limbs, over her body, in her hair, on her face, over her nose, into her mouth, down her throat ... and she screamed.

And that when the bug stirred, shifting just a little, opened its big, fat mouth and bit her face. Didn't bite it off, no, there was no mercy in it. No, it bit her face so that she screamed more, and that's when it shoved its tongue-mouth into hers, ramming down her throat, not gently, the fucking bastard-fuck, but rammed it right in her, without even a by-your-leave!

But then she realized what was happening.

She was being implanted. The thing was pushing its tongue all the way down her throat into her gullet, and she could feel ... _something_ worming its way through the canal of its hollow tongue ... into her. That was her last conscious thought before the lack of oxygen and the terror overtook her.

The huge bug's slime covered over both of them, completely, and they were cocooned together, sealed away from the rest of the world, from that last precious breath of air.

...

"What if she dies?" Second asked.

Of course, Second was referring to One Arm, for the Xenomorphs cared as much about humans as humans cared about Xenomorphs: they all served the same purpose, and that was to be implanted, and those that stood in the way, to be killed.

So, in a way, the Xenomorphs cared _more_ about humans than humans cared about the Xenomorphs, because humans saw all Xenomorphs as the same: Alien.

"She will not," the Queen replied with certainty. "I have not allowed it."

"But what if she does?" Second pressed.

It was well-nigh impossible for a Xenomorph to die: it was either alive, dormant or functioning, or totally annihilated. Second had witnessed the utter damage humans had wrought first-hand. She had observed her sisters die at the hands of humans, ... this human, particularly, so there was nothing fanciful in her question. She asked because One Arm was at the point of death, knocking at the door.

The Queen sighed. Second could ask these questions. Second could question the Queen's authority, but it didn't mean the Queen liked it.

"Second," the Queen demanded, exasperated, "what is your point?"

Second made her point: "One Arm is that human's life-line now. She dies, the human dies."

"So?" The Queen affected disinterest. She knew this fact already without the lecture from Second.

"So," Second pressed, "do we harvest the human in that case? For implanting?"

"To replace your 'One Arm'?" the Queen asked slyly.

"Well, ... yes," Second replied, hearing a trap in her Queen's voice.

But Second's proposal was entirely pragmatic.

"Because a new hatchling, just like the runt," the Queen nodded to the newest member of the Hive, "will replace One Arm?"

"Well," Second said quickly, "no, but ..."

"Then there is your answer," the Queen stated firmly. "No. The human's life is entirely in One Arm's sole claw. One Arm lives, the human lives. So she must live, for I command it, and that is the end of the matter."

Second remained silent, but her simple nervous system – more developed than any of her sisters, granted, but nothing at all like a human brain – was in complete turmoil. How would they expand the Hive if they wasted host material like this? The Queen gave a command, it must be obeyed, but what if One Arm died? The workload was already a nightmare, and without a new hatchling to take up the slack, it would only remain so, if not worsen, as they approached the hosts' homeworld. So, what could the Queen ...

Suddenly it hit Second like the Event Horizon of a Black Hole.

"You're bonding them!" Second exclaimed. "You're bonding One Arm to the human!"

"No, you fool!" the Queen roared, enraged. "Did you learn nothing with me all this time we have been together? One Arm has claimed the human, bringing it here and declaring before all, just like I did on the Hive back on LV-426 with Newt. _I_ am not bonding them; _they_ are bonding."

Second was silent. She did remember how 'First' back then as was did present Newt before all, but she also remembered how Newt bound herself to First and to the whole Hive it seemed, fancying herself a little salamander, a little xenomorph of the hive, and how the whole hive, with time, fancied Newt as an odd little pet, of sorts.

The whole hive was won over by Newt, except, of course, the old Queen, who hated First and hated Newt, her pet project, fearing this change might upset the perfect workings of her perfect Hive.

She was more right than she knew.

But this human, Second observed, was anything but complacent. Newt had her own feistiness, to be sure, but she always turned to First for everything. This human ...

This human was no Newt. This human was a warrior, and very, very different: it was very human, unlike Newt.

"But, my Queen," Second pressed, concern coloring her question, "what if the ... bonding doesn't work?"

The Queen ground her teeth. "Then _we, all of us,_ must make it work, do you understand?"

"Yes, my Queen," Second answered automatically.

"No, my Queen," the Runt answered truthfully.

Second grimaced. _Wrong answer!_

You do not say 'no' to the Queen. If you don't understand, you figure it out until you do, but when the Queen gave an order, you obeyed, without question.

The Queen rose up from her haunches, her back spines brushing the mess deck's overhead, high above. "Then _you_ will learn from Second, and do as she does, until you _do_ understand." The Queen addressed the runt, a gnat far beneath her. "Do you understand that?"

"Yes, my Queen," the runt replied meekly.

The Queen's presence loomed over the runt for a moment, but then she turned her back on the runt and encircled the cocooned One Arm and her human captive with her entire body: arms, legs, and tail forming a protective circle around the gelatinous blob that covered them both entirely.

"Do not answer me this riddle, little one, but meditate on this well," the Queen growled menacingly. "How is it that your sister is nearly dead from combat with the human, but you dare present yourself with nary a scratch from the encounter?"

"But you said, ..." the runt whined.

 _"SILENCE!"_ the Queen screamed, her voice echoing throughout the ship.

"It is your rest cycle," the Queen said after she collected herself. "You can go now."

And with that the Queen dropped off to sleep, neither knowing, nor caring, if the runt obeyed.

The Queen, herself, had to rest, too. And that was far more important.

* * *

... _Two days later ..._

Two days. Not two cycles, or sixteen hours, but two whole days later.

How do you, as a human, deal with waking up, swimming in slimy, solid _goop_ , trying to breathe through your nose, but being unable to do so, so forced, again and again to breathe tiny, little sips of air through a hose that comes from inside of the mouth of a big, stinking alien ... _bug?_

How do you deal with that, minute after minute after hour after hour, without going insane?

And your only anchor is the bug that you just tried to kill, and you didn't? Because ... you couldn't? Because maybe it was better than you?

And when would this ... _torture_ end? And what if it never did?

How would you deal with that feeling?

How did Corporal Torres deal with it?

Mostly: she didn't. She shut down. She slept. She woke, screaming and choking, trying to get her bearings, trying to remember herself and her state as she choked on the tube in her mouth and the slime everywhere around her and everywhere in her. Then, breathing again, desperate little sips of air, then, falling, falling, falling back down into a terrified semi-conscious sleep.

Forever, and forever, and forever.

And then.

Something.

Some movement beyond the gelatinous membrane.

No? Yes?

No: not movement from without, but movement within the slime.

One Arm stirred, called by her Queen, with words Torres could not possibly hear nor ever understand.

Stretching, pulling, sucking.

Corporal Torres' fatigues, such as they were before being slimed were long gone, long dissolved in the viscous, acidic mass that cocooned her. It was a miracle that her skin down to her bones, and even her bones, weren't dissolved in that mess, too.

Or was it?

As One Arm roused herself, restored in the healing bath from her Queen, she pulled herself, and along with her, she pulled the human up out of the huge pool of gunk centered in the mess deck.

It was a struggle to free herself, and Corporal Torres, her right arm dislocated, it felt to her that her limb was being pulled right off, and the rest of her fared hardly better. In fact, if the monster hadn't had a firm grip on her head, her chest, and her hips, she would have been literally dismembered from the force of the slime clinging to her as she was pulled up out of it.

And then, a new pulling sensation as One Arm slowly retracted her inner mouth from Corporal Torres' gut, inch-by-inch, until it finally made its way up out of her mouth.

If One Arm didn't have a firm grip on Corporal Torres, she would have hit the deck like a sack of potatoes. But in One Arm's embrace, Corporal Torres was Raggedy Ann, her mouth sore from being forced wide open all this time, her throat in absolute agony, her insides in turmoil.

Speaking of which, her queasiness got the best of her, and she vomited everything that was in her stomach along One Arm's side.

After puking her guts out, and seeing the mess she made on the bug, she smiled in her small victory, bitter as it was.

But that was all she could manage. It was pitiful, really, seeing how reduced Corporal Torres was.

The Queen, once again enthroned in her seat of power, addressed One Arm: "So, how far have you recovered?"

"Well, my Queen," One Arm said. She stretched isometrically, testing her strength, feeling her wiry muscles expand and contract in their sheaths. "I'd say I'm about 50% percent."

Second, in the background shook her head.

"Second?" the Queen indicated her.

"20% and no more," Second responded crisply. "She's no good to us now, and won't be for a while."

"But ..." One Arm protested.

The Queen spoke right over her to Second: "Then you and the runt must pick up the slack. You," the Queen turned her attention back to One Arm. "This is now your rest cycle. Take the human with you to your cowl and rest."

One Arm was stunned. "But how do I ..."

"Figure it out," the Queen commanded.

One Arm held the human at arm's length. The human's toes barely touched the deck plating, but being all of fifty kilos, she was light as a feather in One Arm's grasp. One Arm observed the human. Share her cowl? How? ... _Why?_

One Arm obeyed. She backed away from her Queen toward her cowl.

 _"Water,"_ Corporal Torres rasped.

But it didn't matter to the hive what sounds a human made. They were always making sounds, begging, screaming as they died. They fulfilled their purpose, and that was all that mattered.

 _"Water, please, God, I'm so thirsty!"_ she said again as One Arm wrapped her in the stub that was her right arm and ascended the bulkhead to her cowl. Corporal Torres was about to get a shock, for, as One Arm peeled open her cowl, she leapt from the bulkhead and launched herself, with Corporal Torres, into the cowl, attached to the overhead, grasping the stem at the top with the claws of her feet. Corporal Torres let loose a scream that echoed throughout the mess deck, annoying all of its new, alien, occupants.

Humans were always screeching, making noises particularly grating to the Xenomorph's very fined-tuned senses, so discourteous of them!

But now they were inverted as One Arm wrapped them both tightly into the petals of the cowl, shrouding them both completely in darkness. It was stiflingly hot, and the air inside the cowl was thick with the stench of bug.

"God, I hate you!" Corporal Torres whispered, despairingly, hanging upside down attached to a slime flower stuck to the overhead and wrapped up tightly in bug claws and tail. "God, I hate you so God-damn much!"

One Arm didn't hear the human, however, for she slept. And Corporal Torres, extremely dehydrated, stomach cramping from hunger being so recently vacated of the slime put into her by the bug that held her suspended a good ten meters above the mess deck, involuntarily cried bitter tears that stung her eyes like a son of a bitch, but exhaustion overtook her hard, and she slept, wishing, praying she'd die in her sleep, but terrified that she just wake up tomorrow to face ... what?

Why would the bugs keep somebody alive? Corporal Torres didn't want to be the one to know the answer to this question.


	10. Cycles

**Chapter Summary:** Tend. Work. Rest. Tend. Work. Rest. A calm, placid, endless cycle of the Hive. But beneath the smooth surface of the hum of activity, the mind tends to wander, then: to wonder.

* * *

 _Tend cycle_

Corporal Torres woke up to her worst nightmare.

Because Corporal Torres' worst nightmare was that she woke up at all.

It took her a few seconds to get her bearings, because everything was upside down, and all the blood rushing to her head was playing havoc with trying to think rationally, or at all, in this case.

But even if her nose had adjusted to the stench of bug, the tactile sensation of that hard, outer shell, and the unearthly coolness to the touch when she shifted her hand a hair's breath let her know she wasn't in Kansas anymore, Toto.

She never was in Kansas. She grew up in Los Angeles, but you get the point.

But that slight hand-shift, where she tried to be subtle, you know? – let sleeping bugs lie, or better yet: die – wasn't as subtle as she wanted it to be, because with one twist of the alien's tail, and the petals of the slimy flower they were encased in spiraled open, and the bug let go of the overhead with its feet because they were falling, falling, falling fast, right toward the deck.

Torres couldn't help herself. She screamed as they fell. And, at the very last instant, the bug shifted around and landed – _thoom! –_ on its feet and its good arm, cradling Torres in the stump of the arm she blew off with her grenade.

Oh, yeah. She remembered that encounter. She thought she got it then, before she was overwhelmed by the others. She thought she got it this time, putting round after round into it. But the fucker wouldn't die, and – _shocker! –_ didn't seem interested in killing her just yet. They killed Gunny to make a new bug. When was it going to be her turn?

In front of them loomed the huge beast, Satan motherfucking-himself, squatting on his haunches looking over the whole mess deck like it owned the damn place. Torres had seen some bugs, some bigger, some smaller, but she never had seen anything like this before.

She felt a vibration through her teeth and tickling the soles of her feet and looked keenly at the big beast. It didn't move, it just sat there and breathed like a forty-year-old fuck stalking girls coming out of high school, but, somehow, Torres wondered if that vibration came from it.

It did.

The Queen had just commanded One Arm to _tend_ to the human.

"What do I do?" One Arm asked her Queen.

The Queen knew humans. The Queen had been with Newt since before One Arm joined the new Hive with this new Queen.

"You need to feed it," the Queen explained. "Every tending cycle: it eats, it excretes. This is their cycle."

One Arm examined the human. Every tending cycle it ate? Why didn't Newt have to? Was Newt different than humans? Newt had been with the Queen for years. Years! Cycle after cycle, and One Arm had never really observed Newt closely. Newt was the Queen's and that's all that mattered to the Hive.

But now that One Arm was assigned to tend to this human, she wished she had taken more notice of Newt and her ways, because she was now in totally foreign territory.

 _Feed the human._ One Arm thought.

You didn't feed humans: there was never any need. You implanted them, you waited two cycles, and you let the liberated larval form feed off _them._

Well, One Arm knew how implanting worked. She didn't have a seed in her, however, but she stored energy in herself that she burned very, very efficiently. Giving up any of that was counter to her nature. Self-preservation wasn't the primary concern for a Xenomorph, like it was for a human, but it was up there.

 _Eh,_ she thought: _feed the human. Here goes._

You ever feed a human? It's easier done than said ... that is, if you don't care about the state of their internal organs after you 'fed' them. One Arm had accidentally killed a human with a flick of her wrist, and she held this 'fiercesome warrior' easily in her good arm, in fact, easily even with the stump of what remained of her other arm. If she did this wrong, the human would die. Of course, she had already preserved the human in the cocooned state, but she was comatose when she had done this. This was different.

But One Arm was never afraid of a challenge.

"Scared again, stumpy?" Second asked solicitously.

One Arm spared one snarl in Second's direction, then forced the human down on its knees and straddled it from behind, forcing its head back to clear a straight path down its feeding canal, just barely avoiding snapping its neck.

"Wha-..." Corporal Torres grunted in shock.

And that's when One Arm, her dome bowed down right over the human's head, opened her outer mouth, roaring like a lion in the human's face, and shot her inner mouth into the human's gaping mouth.

And she began to push her mouth, gently, but irresistibly, down into the human's throat.

To Corporal Torres receiving the treatment, 'gently' was a vicious lie. To her, she was being savagely throat-fucked by the bug, but instead of any in-and-out that might have given her the chance to breathe, to scream, to ... anything, the fucker just kept pressing its big fucking dick-mouth deeper and deeper down her throat. She tried to thrash, but the thing had her by the neck and her knees pressed down and locked onto the deck. Her flailing arms delivered glancing blows to the beast, but she had no leverage, and with its hard exoskeleton, she really would have only hurt herself more than it if she could have managed to land a solid blow.

She tried to breathe. She couldn't. Once again, darkness overtook her.

...

For the Xenomorph, the cycle was everything. One might think that all they did was attack, attack, attack, but, actually this was only a very small part of a Xenomorph's life cycle: only the very lucky few ever saw combat. For most xenomorphs, and for most of the time, they worked, slept, and tended. Much like a human: few ever saw combat, and most of their lives were filled with the mundane day-to-day routine. So xenomorphs, and the Hive, as a society, was very much like humanity, yes?

No. Of course not.

For, at a very basic level, biologically, the xenomorph was fundamentally different than a human being. A xenomorph is a constructed entity, a bioweapon, and, as such, was designed from the ground up to be both nearly perfectly efficient and almost entirely self-sufficient. A human wastes an incredible amount of energy simply by breathing. Did you know that? The translation process for a human of oxygen intake to be used to keep its cells alive and functioning is just so inefficient, using only one percent of the oxygen intake and respiring only one percent more carbon dioxide as waste, but, compared to a xenomorph, even that process, alone, is terribly inefficient, as human add an incredible amount of heat waste (that is to say: wasted energy), for, when a Xenomorph breathed in, it was to an end, and all possible uses of the intake were broken down and stored for use now or for later, when a xenomorph exhaled, it was a very high waste output, and that is why their breath stank: even when a human shit, a lot of that shit could have been used in a more efficient metabolic process. Xenomorphs didn't have this problem: xenomorphs didn't shit, nor sweat, nor even breathe out inefficiently. Xenomorphs didn't even emit (much) heat, and that made them so damn hard to track. Stealth technology? Xenomorphs didn't show up on infrared, and their 'skin'? Their exoskeleton was dull gray-green-black in color because a Xenomorph didn't reflect (much) light, even: they absorbed the photons and used that, even that, as energy to fuel them to their dread purpose.

So, a human, emitting all that noise of their heartbeat, and their loud, military-grade boots on the deck-plating, breathing, emitting heat and trying to sneak up on a Xenomorph? You see why it's the Xenomorph that so successfully hunted humans, and not the other way around.

And this was One Arm's confusion at the Queen's command to feed the human. A Xenomorph ate regularly at one, very brief, stage of development: from larva to full-grown worker or warrior, then, only when energy ebbs, like when crawling into a ship from the vacuum of space, or before or after a few glorious moments of combat. _That_ was when a Xenomorph fed: only to replenish depleted energy-stores. So if you lose against a Xenomorph, you get eaten ... alive.

So don't lose.

One Arm regarded her human captive. It wasn't moving, it was odd that it was breathing. Why would you breathe if you don't have to be in motion? Humans were not confusing to One Arm, because she never considered them anything other than enemies to fight and kill, or hosts to implant. This human fit under neither category at present and so presented One Arm a conundrum: what to do with it now? What to do with it at all?

One Arm did not like conundrums. She liked everything to fit in its nice, neat little box.

One Arm looked to Second for guidance. "What do I do with it now?" she asked.

Second was her usual helpful-self. "Well, you could play paddycake with it? No, that's right, you can't, anyway, being down to one arm and all, so: half-a-cake?"

One Arm wasn't in the mood. "You know, on the scale of one to 'fuck off and die,' Second, you're right up in the 'about to get your face ripped off'-range."

Second chuckled. She could use a good fight right about now, herself. Nothing against her Queen, but this Hive was just too stodgy and boring. It wasn't that this Queen was a disciplinarian, nor was she dictatorial. No, the last queen was that, and vicious, too. But the last queen had no time to be asinine, as managing over one-hundred workers was just too much for her to handle, so she had to let a lot slide. With only two, then three members in this hive, this Queen had too many opportunities to be hands-on.

Second didn't like this: it cramped her style of just going out and killing shit. She got to do a bit of that when they took this vessel from the humans, but that was more than two whole months ago.

Since then, it had been pretty much smooth-sailing, that is to say: _booooorrrriiinnnnngggg!_

Second could use a good fight right about now.

But, no. Second could just see the human being trampled and torn underfoot as Second and One Arm had their fun. The Queen would not be pleased.

Second sighed. This Hive was all work and no play, but so it goes. "Well, it is your tend cycle," she told One Arm. "So, off you go. I'll watch the human. You do the rounds about the ship."

"No," the Queen said. Both Second and One Arm fell silent. "The human is to be with you at all times," she continued, addressing One Arm. "It is to be thus until the human is bonded with you. Take it with you as you go about your duties."

"Yes, my Queen," One Arm acquiesced immediately. "But, ..." she dared ask, "how will I know when it is bonded to me?"

The Queen chuckled, deep in her belly. "Oh, you will know! When it runs to you and not from you? When, instead of fighting you, it fights to hold you? Do you not remember how Newt is with me? When its very being is entwined with yours, in short, when you are _bonded,_ when you know that you are bonded, and you don't have to ask, ... yes," the Queen nodded sagely, "that is when you are bonded. Right, Second?"

Second was distracted. "Yes, my Queen," she answered automatically, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

The Queen snarled a vicious smile. "Jealous, my dear Second?" she asked smugly.

"Of course not, my Queen!" Second replied, offended.

The Queen laughed easily. "You never did like Newt, did you."

"Not true," Second replied. It's not that she didn't _... like_ Newt. It's just that she never got her Queen's fascination with the immature host. She saw it all as a big waste of time and energy. And then, when Newt, the little human female matured, and suddenly their old Queen was instantly interested in disposing of the human rival, it all happened so fast! 'First' disobeying her Queen, abandoning the Hive and stealing Newt away, and then their bonding with 'First' herself maturing into a rogue Queen, stealing herself, the new Queen's old warrior companion, and then ten others, including One Arm, with the intent to overthrow the old Queen and take over the hive.

All because of one little human colonist that wasn't immediately implanted. Sure, it was too scrawny to host an injection of an egg, but, okay, just kill it then.

But no. And now this.

The Queen snorted. "Liar," she accused affectionately, "but you were always more diplomatic than I."

Second smirked. "Now, that is true," she agreed, but, even though she was outwardly easy, inside she still was in turmoil. _'This'_ was only getting worse, because her Queen, now bonded, was introducing it into her own Hive. She had the right to do that, of course, but it stung that she didn't share this plan with Second. Further, what was the point? Xenomorphs were built to be entirely self-sufficient, and then: incredibly efficient when working together in the eusocial structure of the Hive: both independent but also indomitable. Bonding a host to a worker? a warrior? Why expose a superior race to an inferior one?

It make no sense to Second at all.

"Second," the Queen commanded, snapping Second back to her duty, "don't you have a new pilot to train?"

"Yes, my Queen," Second replied crisply. "You," she directed at One Arm, "enough dallying: attend to your duties."

Shit flows downhill fast in the Hive.

 _"'You'?"_ One Arm hissed, but Second had already brushed past her, grabbing the runt and heading toward the bridge.

 _Teaching a new worker to pilot an alien interstellar vessel,_ Second thought darkly as she left, _what could possibly go wrong?_

None of this escaped the Queen. Second was a 'deep thinker.' The Queen had no use for this.

Inaccurate. The Queen had lots of use for this: between Second's 'deep thoughts' and One Arm's tactical brilliance in combat, the Queen was sitting on the foundations of a Hive that could actually win battles not just by overwhelming the enemy with surprise and superior numbers, for, if that were the case, she could have never entertained taking on the Hive on LV-426. A Hive that was bigger than her own nascent one ten times over.

But there were too many moving pieces the Queen had to deal with: One Arm's bonding, Second's deep thoughts, the insufficiency of the runt, and landing on a host homeworld, and striking out into that planet before the Hive was struck down itself.

And she missed Newt terribly. It was a constant itch she wouldn't scratch. She would _not_ have Newt revived until she was certain of everything: getting her out of cryo, yes, but then, with a human? a runt? with unpredictable behaviors.

Too many things could go wrong, and what was infuriating the Queen was it was all taking far too long to fall into place.

When the Queen was pensive, she stilled herself, but it did not look like she were sleeping, at all, more like she sat, ... squatted, at the start line of a race, ready to leap forward to strike, to kill, to win.

The Queen needed victories, but all she was facing were delays.

She hissed toward One Arm. "Leave me."

One Arm scooped up the human in the stump of her right arm and backed away from her Queen, ferocious in stillness.


	11. Cat and Mouse

**Chapter Summary:** What's a girl to do when being dragged by a bug around your interstellar ship highjacked by bugs? Punch the fucker hard, obviously. Except their exoskeletons don't give. The bones in your hand do, come to find.

* * *

 _Tending Cycle._

Floating.

Corporal Torres woke being pinned, face down, to some mech wandering through the bowels of the ship. The way was dark, except for the emergency lighting, so, while Corporal Torres' eyes tried to adjust, all she could see were shadows on shadows.

Her right arm was still fucking useless, being dislocated... _What, was it going to fix itself when I woke, dumbass?_ she thought bitterly to herself.

But something was weird with the mech: there were no mechanical sounds coming from it, ...

And it was breathing.

 _"Fuck!"_ she cursed. It was a fucking bug! She should've know by the god-damn smell the fucker gave off! A fucking bug was carrying her through the main deck, swiveling its big dome left and right as it flitted silently through the main corridor.

Her outburst elicited no reaction from the bug. It was as if it didn't even know she was there, but Corporal Torres doubted that highly. It was carrying her, so it had to know she was there. Earlier (... _when?_ she wondered), when she moved her hand in that big slime-flower on the overhead, the bug instantly reacted.

Was it so preoccupied it didn't even notice her? Or maybe it did, but it just didn't care?

Unobtrusively, Corporal Torres tried to work her left hand around the stump of the bug's arm holding her to it. She tried to pull it off her, but she had no leverage, as the stump terminated right under her armpit, pretty much, and she couldn't get a good grip on the thing because of that angle. There was no wiggle room – in fact, she was lucky to be breathing! – and squirming didn't do anything, either. Her skin didn't even shift in the slightest under its steel grip.

"Hey, asshole!" she called up from underneath the bug as it walked. "How's about you let me go so I can ..."

 _"Hsst!"_ the bug responded, sounding annoyed.

This response infuriated Corporal Torres. "Did you just shush me?" she snapped.

 _"Hsst!"_ the bug hissed again at her.

 _"Motherfucker!"_ she shouted. "Do you know who the _fuck_ you're dea-..."

The bug reached under itself with its left claw, enclosing Corporal Torres' torso and shoulders in it, and _slammed_ her against the bulkhead, two feet above the deck.

 _"Oof!"_ Corporal Torres grunted, more from surprise than from pain.

The bug raised its dome, showing its outer teeth to Corporal Torres, and hissed an angry _"HSSSSST!"_ at her, then lowered its dome as it held her against the bulkhead. Corporal Torres got the feeling it was glaring at her, which was weird, because it didn't have eyes, as far as she could tell.

The message was clear: _You're pushing your luck._

But did Corporal Torres give a fuck?

She carefully gathered as much saliva as she could in her mouth and very deliberately spat right on its ... face? Well, its big-ole dome-thingie, anyway.

 _Close enough!_ Corporal Torres thought in grim delight as she saw her saliva trickle down its dome.

The bug didn't move. It held Corporal Torres against the bulkhead for a good half-minute more and just let her spit dribble off it.

Then, very deliberately, it raised its dome, showing her its teeth again in a terrible rictus.

"Do it!" Corporal Torres screamed at the bug.

It lashed forward and snapped its outer jaw a half an inch from Corporal Torres' face. _SNAP!_ A steel trap would've been less deadly than the alien's jaws springing shut on her face, had it pushed forward just a bit more.

It withdrew slowly, smiling its deadly smile at her.

"Fuck you!" Corporal Torres shouted at the thing. "Fuck _you!_ I'm not afraid of you, you fucking ..."

The bug spat, right into Corporal Torres' face, but unlike her little golfball-sized spit a minute ago that did nothing to the bug, this spitball was bigger than a softball and completed covered her face in slime, and, unlike the bug's heavily armored dome, completely shut off from the world, Corporal Torres' face was wide open: eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and she swallowed the slime in a shocked _gulp!_ and spent the next good minute coughing and spitting and snorting and blinking to clear her eyes and nose and mouth of the most disgusting, stinking gunk Corporal Torres had ever had the misfortune to come in contact with.

And the _taste_ of it! Corporal Torres was right ready to puke again from the god-awful taste and smell of that shit that came out of its mouth.

The bug regarded her the whole time during her ordeal, unmoving, compassionless, pitiless, ... void of pretty much any discernible emotion: it didn't look angry, and Corporal Torres couldn't tell if it were getting its rocks off, either.

After she had coughed herself out, and wiped her eyes a few time with the back of her arm. The bug showed its teeth again, and _hsst!_ at her.

"Fuck. you." Corporal Torres growled right back at it, unbowed.

The alien _hsst!_ again, but this time it sounded different, slightly, Torres thought, and she got the impression that it was pleased with her defiance. It put her right back into its midsection, and wrapped the stump of its right arm around her, molding her into it.

And then it continued along its way, as if nothing had happened, touring the ship, heading toward the bridge.

...

 _The Bridge._

"Well, look at what we have here!" Second chortled wickedly.

"Drop it," One Arm, entering, hissed sourly. But she didn't drop her own burden.

"Holy ... fuck!" One Arm's burden, Corporal Torres, the words just fell from her mouth as she took in the two bugs in the bridge, one of them at the nav console. "You know what that is?" she asked, shocked, more to herself that the bugs.

The second, smallest, bug, at the nav console, diverted its attention from what it was doing to Corporal Torres, but then returned its attention to the nav console.

Torres couldn't tell for sure, but she got the vibe that the 'little' one, which would have easily towered over her, didn't like her much. _Like I give a fuck!_ she amended herself. Like she wanted the bugs to like her? What kind of bullshit feeling was that?

"How's it coming along?" One Arm asked, glad to be with her own kind again. Truth be told, having a human around severely limited her mobility, and slowed her down significantly, because of the discipline-issue. One Arm had things to do, but the human wasn't on board with just letting One Arm tend to her duties. It was all very annoying, One Arm thought, and she didn't see the point of _tending_ _to_ a human without some end, and the only end One Arm knew for humans was implantation.

Second grunted noncommittally, which really meant she wasn't happy at all, but, being the diplomatic one, she reserved her judgements and her words. "We're really just getting started... and we have a major handicap, seeing as you two decided to disable the central computer system."

"Couldn't be helped," One Arm said. "The human was interacting with that tech, and you know humans and their tech. Would you prefer we left it on-line and the human redirect the ship into the star? Or vent us to space?"

Second grunted again. She couldn't disagree with One Arm's tactical decision, but that didn't mean she had to like it, nor did it make training the runt any easier.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Second asked curtly. She didn't like being observed while she worked.

"Tending, duh!" One Arm quipped, a little bite in her own words. "You need anything?"

"Like what?" Second asked, distracted. She had work to do.

"Oh," One Arm smirked. "Like: your own human? I've got one right here."

Corporal Torres didn't understand one word of the Aliens' speech, or even that they were talking and using 'words.' They weren't, as they don't, but the Xenomorphs communicate by concepts and intents. Humans would hear hissing sounds, when it was in a human's hearing range, but most of it isn't: some concepts are communicated kinesthetically, others by smell. Corporal Torres was so far out of her league it wasn't funny. It sure as hell wasn't fun for her.

"Hey, dumb-fuck!" she called up to her captor. "How's about you put me down, so I can get a shit-ton of C4 and grenades and blow you and your big-ass motherfucker boss to hell, huh? And maybe," she swallowed, "a cup of water or something, you know? Or have you fucks never heard of the Geneva Convention!"

The bugs paused, politely observing her as she shouted out her nonsense sounds at them.

Second: "Can you please shut that thing up?"

"Pfft!" One Arm snorted. "Easier said than done, unless you want me to eviscerate it? But I don't think that would go over well with the Queen..."

"Yeah, yeah," Second conceded. "Does it carry on making those grating noises like that all the time?"

One Arm sighed. "You wouldn't believe!" she snorted in exasperation. She had a thought. "How long did it take Newt to get to the rudimentary form of communication she has?" she asked Second hopefully.

Second stopped what she was doing and was quiet.

"Second?" One Arm asked. _What the hell was up?_ she wondered.

Then Second started laughing. She was guffawing, then roaring with laughter.

"What's so funny?" One Arm demanded heatedly.

Second gasped out: "A revolution!" she chuckled. "A whole fucking planetary revolution before Newt could manage to say more than even piss-all! It was fucking horrible when she first came into the Hive! You have no idea!"

One Arm _hsst_ ed at Second. "Gee! Thanks a lot!"

"Oh, hohoho!" Second, laughing again. "No, thank _you_ for that memory. Oh, fuck! Your life is going to be a living hell for ... pretty much forever! Ahh, ha, ha, ha!"

"You know what, Second? Fuck you!" One Arm snarled. She had had enough of this shit. She turned her back on Second, furious, and exited the bridge.

"Put me down!" Torres screamed and struggled more, trying to worm her way out of her captor's grasp. "Put me down now, you overgrown space-bug!"

Torres' outburst only amused Second even more. _"Seeeeee?"_ Second taunted One Arm as she left the bridge, and peals of laughter followed One Arm down the main passageway.

 _"FUCK!"_ One Arm screamed out of frustration. Why did _she_ have to be the one to be tending to this human! Obviously Second knew more about these things... why couldn't it be _her!_

But then the ship _lurched._

Hard.

And One Arm was thrown with her burden against one bulkhead, then, even much harder, against the opposed bulkhead when the ship _lurched_ back the other way.

"What the ... fuck?" Corporal Torres shouted, bewildered. "Wait!" she said. "You bugs are trying to _steer the ship? Fucking kill me now, you stupid fucks! Don't you know shit? It's all done by the nav computers!"_

The lurching seemed to have stopped for the moment ... no, ... things began to ... _list,_ slowly, the opposite way again.

One Arm, done with being tossed about, had multiple immediate concerns, but playing nice-nice with the human wasn't one of them.

Bringing it to heel, however, was.

She grabbed the human with her good claw and slammed it, gently, but firmly, pinning it to the bulkhead with her claw.

"Look," she said to it. "I don't like this; you don't like this. I don't care. _You_ have to stop this antagonistic posturin-..."

Torres, tired of the patronizing incomprehensible hissing lecture, balled her left fist and threw a haymaker right along the side of the bug's jaw.

"Ow." Torres remarked in passing. The bug didn't even flinch, but Corporal Torres felt her hand go numb, then felt a trickle of wetness. She looked at the bug's jaw, but everything was in place there. Then she looked at her hand.

It looked kind of funny. Kind of dented in, weird that way.

And there was blood trickling down from her very badly scraped knuckles.

 _Ooh! That's going to hurt when the buzz from the adrenalin rush fades away!_ she thought ruefully.

The bug just stared at her. That is, Torres guessed that's what it was doing. The thing, not having eyes, and about the only expression she had seen on its face was to _hsst_ at her, was really hard for her to read. Not that she cared.

"What?" she shouted at it.

One Arm ground her teeth in frustration. Talking to the human was pointless, just as pointless as the sounds it hurled at One Arm. What she really wanted to do was back-hand the human so hard that pieces of it would smear the bulkhead, but the Queen wouldn't be pleased with that.

None of this made sense. Humans were hosts, nothing more.

She dropped the human from her grasp, causing it to crumple to the deck. Then she took her clawed foot, as large as the human's torso, and pinned the human to the deck with it. Even just a slight bit more pressure, and the human would pop like a tube of toothpaste squeezed under a steamroller. One Arm knew this. The human'd better if it knew what was good for it.

It didn't. Corporal Torres struggled under the oppressive weight of the bug, hurling obscenities at the monster. But One Arm ignored these now. Yes, they annoyed her, which, if Corporal Torres knew this, would only encourage more of this behavior.

Marines are bad-ass? Sure. They are also kids just out of high school, full of shit and spit, spoiling for a fight to win, to prove themselves good enough for Daddy to notice them. Corporal Torres was a grown woman, who could handle herself well enough, and more so, but she was also a kid out of school, kicked out of home, and a chip on her shoulder the size of Kansas.

If One Arm had taken Human Psych 101, she would've seen this.

Of course, her enrollment in such a course would throw the diversity goals right out the window, as, up to now, Xenomorphs have been woefully underrepresented in college courses.

One Arm hadn't, so she wasn't actually up on human behaviors and motivations.

And she was right tired of the human's outburst.

... and this was just day one.

One Arm grabbed the human's left paw, the one she struck her jaw with, and examined it, thrumming deep in her throat, in effect using sound as an X-ray. On 'seeing' the damage the human had inflicted on itself, One Arm snorted derisively. _Humans,_ she thought disparagingly, _take away their tech, and they are nothing!_ She could see Second's dislike of them, and she tended now to agree with her. What did the Hive need of these beings?

One Arm pried the human's paw open carefully.

"Ow!" Torres shouted. "That ... _ow!_ ... that hurts, motherfucker!"

Bones scraped against each other as they shifted around in her hand then ground into place.

No, it wasn't a perfect set, but it was a hell of a lot better than they just were. With that, One Arm slammed the human's arm down on the deck plating, the began vomiting great gobs of spit over Torres' hand and arm, holding it down to the deck until the gelatinous goop solidified then hardened to a plastic-like mold ... with pretty much all of Corporal Torres' arm sealed inside, glued to the deck. That left the rest of her body, and, particularly, her useless, dislocated arm, lying there on the deck.

One Arm examined her handiwork and found it to be good. She removed her foot from Torres' chest, then bringing her dome down, face-to-face, as it were, with her human captive, she hissed: "Stay."

Turning her back on the human, who wasn't going anywhere, she started off to check on the Queen, her first priority. Or it should have been if the human hadn't stupidly crunched its very fragile endoskeletal structure against her.

"Well, _hsst_ you, too, motherf-..."

Torres' taunt was stopped midstream, because the bug turned, screamed, leaping right at Torres and _– WHAM! –_ struck the bulkhead right above her with its claw so hard it dented it.

Then _WHAM!_ struck it again. The metal shrieked and bent, just a little.

 _WHAM!_ One more time, and the fist-print of the alien was now indelibly inscribed into the bulkhead right next to where Corporal Torres lay, watching the alien turn from some indifferent space-bug into truly a rage-filled monster.

Its clawed fist remained pressed against the indented bulkhead as it was suddenly still. It visibly reined in its fury, panting above her, its attention focused on the bulkhead above her, not 'looking' at her, ... not daring to?

It turned and left abruptly, headed in the direction of the mess deck.

Corporal Torres didn't realize it, but when she imitated One Arm, who commanded her to 'stay' – like a good little puppy-human – her human mouth mispronounced the _hsst_ -word horribly, saying _'die!'_ This is the cry one xenomorph screamed at another as they launched at each other in honor-combat ... to the death.

She didn't realize what she had said, but, now, maybe, she realized the import of her statement.

"Well, well, well," Corporal Torres remarked dryly.

But there was nobody there with her to hear her revelation.

...

"My Queen! ..." One Arm called.

 _"WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED!"_ The Queen screamed, interrupting One Arm, her claws dug into the deck plating.

"I think ..." One Arm began.

"Wait!" The Queen snapped.

One Arm waited.

Quietly. Menacingly: "Come here."

One Arm carefully approached her Queen.

 _"Where_ is your human?" the Queen asked.

"I left it in the ..."

"Is it alive?" the Queen asked.

One Arm's tail twitched. Something was up. She was in trouble. Why?

"Yes, my Queen," she answered carefully.

The Queen ground her teeth. _"Where_ is your human?"

One Arm felt the need to fidget. "My Queen," she said, "I left it ..."

"Did I not tell you that it was to be with you _AT ALL TIMES?"_

The Queen didn't even try to keep her cool anymore, and she was screaming in rage by the time she finished her question to her subject.

 _Oh,_ with a start One Arm realized the trouble she was in.

"Yes, my Queen," she responded, contrite.

"Ah, good," the Queen said, all cool again. "I'm glad to know I was _FUCKING CLEAR WHEN I FUCKING GAVE YOU A FUCKING ORDER! NOW FUCKING GO FUCKING RIGHT NOW AND GET YOUR HUMAN AND FIND OUT WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON... NOW!"_

 _'All cool again'_ the Queen was ... well, for a second there, anyway.

"Yes, my Q-..."

 _"NOOOOWWWW!"_ The Queen screamed, restraining herself, just barely, from lashing out with her claw, bigger than that human, and smashing One Arm to a smear of acid paste.

One Arm backed out quickly from the mess deck.

The Queen had said _'your human,'_ One Arm noticed. _'Your_ human.'

One Arm didn't know what to think about that. She didn't know if she liked this ownership-thing. Only the Queen owned, and she owned everything. The rest of the members of the Hive were in eucommunion, not owning: but being owned.

One Arm, however, didn't have the luxury of having the choice of liking something or not.

...

"Good talk?" Corporal Torres asked from the deck in mock-solicitousness.

She could hear the screaming all the way from the mess deck, and the way One Arm approached her – hang-dog, almost – you didn't need higher math to put two and two together on this one: her buggy had gotten a right reaming out, but good.

Also, she hadn't just laid there during the kerfuffle. After all, what better time to get free and, armed with the knowledge that there were four bugs, take them all out: two in the bridge, two in the mess deck: boom! boom! Done!

But her one arm was nailed to the deck and the other arm was useless. She squirmed a bit, and all she managed to show for it was to prove to herself how much agony she could endure coming from both sides of her body, ... and not move an inch.

That spit of theirs was some kind of resin or epoxy because she was damn-well glued to the deck!

The bug ignored her, of course, walking right up to her and again spit all over her sealed arm. Corporal Torres watched closely, pretending not to watch. Spit against spit and the whole casing around her arm softened some. One Arm snaked her claw into the goop, under Torres' hand, and _lifted ..._

"Ow! Ow! _OW!"_

... and _lifted_ her hand up out of the goop.

 _"OW!_ That _hurt,_ motherfucker!" Torres accused angrily.

One Arm hummed over Corporal Torres' slime-covered hand. It was still broken, and the bones had no time to heal at all.

One Arm snorted angrily. _Damn, these humans mend so slowly!_ she thought and pressed the human's hand into its chest in a reverse 'Pledge of Allegiance.' She then spit again over the hand, sealing Corporal Torres' hand over her breast.

 _Nice,_ Torres thought bitterly. She was getting more than her fair share of bug-spit, she reckoned, because if there were some Universal Constant of bug-spit, Corporal Torres had exceeded her lifetime quota by now.

"Oh, golly, gee! Thanks!" she spat her words sarcastically at the bug. Maybe she realized, unconsciously, that the bug had immobilized her hand with a make-shift bug-sling. Maybe she didn't want to realize it, and just wanted to hate the bug for being a grade-A asshat.

Corporal Torres struggled to sit up, now that she was freed from the goop nailing her to the deck, but One Arm pushed her back down.

"What?" Torres asked, miffed.

The bug put its large clawed foot over her torso, anchoring her, again, to the deck, then reached to her right arm.

Maria's eyes got round. "Uh, careful, uh, ... _ow! Ow! Okay! ow! ow! ow! ow!"_

Then: _pop!_

 _"Oooowwwww! Okay! Ow! you fucking ..."_

Torres' voice trailed off, for she realized something had happened.

Tentatively, she tested her right arm.

 _Huh,_ she thought.

She could move her arm again. She wiggled her shoulder experimentally. It was tender – _hella-tender,_ to be sure – but she could move her shoulder, her upper arm, too, and she could twist her hand about. She experimentally flexed then fisted her fingers. _Huh,_ _that worked, too!_ she marveled.

The beast reached toward her again as it removed its foot from her chest.

"Um, ..." Maria remarked, then, as it picked her up from the deck. "Okay, ow! _Ow!_ Careful, you fuck! 'Sus!"

Corporal Torres was from California, sure, but she wasn't down with the plan of all this huggy, touchy-feely snuggling with a fucking space-bug.

But that was the bug's plan, and Torres had no option but to play ball with the big, stinking cockroach. Without fanfare, the bug rotated Corporal Torres around, and grasping her with its right stump, tucked her into it.

Then it took off at a very decent sprint, back toward the bridge.

Bumpy ride, riding a bug: like if a Tyrannosaurus Rex were giving out kiddie-rides, but with no saddle, so lump-lump-lump you go soundlessly down the ship's main passageway at break-neck speed, praying the thing doesn't let you go ... nor stop and eat you.

They burst onto the bridge in fine-form, making a superhero's entrance.

That was totally ignored by the other bugs.

 _Well, that was an underwhelming climax,_ Torres thought.

Then she smirked to herself at the _double entendre: 'underwhelming climax'_ pretty much defined what happened every time a guy stuck his dick into her. He came, she didn't, and that was that. You figure she'd give up on sex, or on boys, or on sex with boys all together, but, hey, maybe it was because she was nineteen and so were they, you know? Hope is what kept you going, right? Hope that your next lay would be better, ... when you knew it wasn't gonna be, and, surprise, surprise! another disappointment: another 'underwhelming climax.'

Just like their entrance.

Of course, they were just a bit more noise: the ship's navigational alarms were a constant keening alert that made their own entrance a quiet affair.

One Arm lowered the human to the deck, then pushed her down, ... _forced_ her down, more like, so that she was sitting on the deck, cross-legged.

"Stay," One Arm _hsst_ at her.

"Yeah, yeah," Torres bit off, but she didn't hiss back at the thing. You could already cut the tension on the bridge with a butter knife, without her contributing to _three_ bugs losing their shit over her.

One Arm approached the other two. "The Queen needs a report. Stat."

Neither looked up from the console. Second's dorsal spines bristled. "We are working. I am teaching the runt to pilot this vessel. She is piloting the vessel."

"You call what happened 'piloting'?" One Arm demanded.

Second hissed in annoyance. Why couldn't she just do her job without every member of the Hive critiquing her, but no. _"Yes,"_ she replied tightly. "It seems the controls are very ... sensitive. Yes, we are off our projected course. So, now we have a perfect opportunity for the runt to learn to rectify that, just as the Queen has commanded."

One Arm was not appeased. "Show me," she said.

Second didn't like One Arm's tone. She ground her teeth, but called up the holograph of the ship's course with audio cues enabled.

Corporal Torres, meanwhile, was keenly interested and watched them closely. She wasn't interested in what they were interested _in;_ no, she was interested that they were so focused on what interested _them_.

 _Now!_ she thought, and stood, stealthily, and started to back away, step-by-step.

The bugs, engrossed in _manually_ piloting the ship, of all things, didn't notice.

Or so she thought.

She turned quickly and sprinted out the main hatch One Arm had burst through just a moment before.

The runt spoke first: "The human is escaping."

"Oh, really?" One Arm asked sarcastically, and turned to go.

"Wait," Second said.

"No," One Arm said. "I can't."

"What?" Second snarled.

"Queen's orders," One Arm stated apologetically. "She said I _cannot_ leave the human unattended."

"Since when did we become hosts' wet nurses?" the runt asked, disgusted.

 _"Since NOW!"_ One Arm screamed, furious more because she wanted to ask the exact same question, but she didn't have that option now.

"Okay," Second said, diplomatically. "Follow the human, but do not engage."

"Second," One Arm _tsk_ ed, "we both know where the human is going. I am _not_ going to get shot up again, thanks."

"You won't," Second said. "Now do as I command."

One Arm hissed and left the bridge at a dead run, actually in physical pain at being any distance from the human: such was the weight of the Queen's command imposed upon a member of her Hive.

Second turned her attention to the runt. "You are relieved of navigation duty."

"But, Second! No! Please!" the runt whined. "I can fix this! I'm getting the feel of this. Let me. Please!"

"Oh, no doubt!" Second replied, chuckling. "You made this mess, you will fix it, but now you have another duty."

The runt shifted her attention from the navigation console to Second. "What is that?"

"Do you know where the human is going?" Second quizzed.

The runt shrugged. "To their weapon storage chamber?" The runt didn't know humans, but this made the most sense to her.

"That is your new duty," Second nodded. "Find out. If it is to their weapon-store, do not let it enter. Do not engage in combat with it, but don't allow it access to any weapons. It has now lost that privilege."

The runt was puzzled. "How am I going to prevent it access if I don't engage with it?"

Second smiled. "If you're waiting in that chamber for it with a nice, friendly-like greeting, it may choose to rethink its strategy."

"Oh," the runt said, then, smiling wickedly, she said: "oh!"

She disengaged from the nav console and scampered off. Navigating a ship was hard and unrewarding. Playing with a human? Now, that could be fun!

Second observed the ship's current course verses Earth-intercept course. They seemed to overlap completely.

"Magnify," she said.

The nav computer wasn't a fully interactive AI, but it was adaptive enough. It zoomed in the hologram with a ping.

The enlarged detail showed a more concerning story: they were already over one thousand kilometers off course, and accelerating further from projected Earth-intercept course.

Second was sorely tempted to fix things right now by herself. But then, how would the runt learn?

Second yearned for the good old days, when she and First where hunting humans on LV-426, having _fun._ All this letting _others_ do stuff while she just sat and supervised was no fun at all.

She sighed and, leaving the nav console, headed to the mess deck. The Queen needed a report, _stat,_ after all.

...

The runt rocketed past One Arm along the overhead, tracking the human, undetected.

"What the hell are you doing here?" One Arm whispered angrily.

The runt didn't pause to chat. "On a mission; gotta go!" was all she said, having ascertained that the human was, yes, indeed, headed in the direction of the armory.

"What?" One Arm demanded, then, intensely: "Listen, you little shit: you _touch_ my human, I'll feed you your guts until you puke acid and die! _You hear me?"_

Those were fighting words, but the runt wasn't baited. "Yup, thanks; got it."

And she was gone, leaving One Arm to eat her (figurative) dust as she beat a path to the armory.

One Arm, barely a meter above her human, crawled along the overhead at steady pace, silent as death itself.

...

Corporal Torres knew she would be missed by the bugs. Or, heck, maybe she wouldn't, and she'd get lucky because of rainbows and unicorns and shit.

As you can see: Corporal Torres didn't believe in luck. And she knew the bugs were faster than her. But if she had enough lead-time before they found out, it would be they that were surprised with a hail of bullets and a grenade shoved right down their motherfucking throats. How about them apples?

That's what kept her running, top-speed, toward the armory, an insane hope that she could reach it again before they did, and work that second chance for all it was worth: do or die.

Because the alternative: sit there like a fucking pet, to be some bug's barbie doll? No, thanks, not for this Marine!

And, importantly, what kept her going was no sign of the bugs, so far!

She hit the ladders, did a quick scan of her surroundings as she slid down them, top-speed, her arms were shit to her. Her right arm tender and her left arm immobilized. How she was going to suit up and, okay, control a weapon kicking under full auto was going to be a problem. She'd have to deal with that, however, when she got to that point. Besides, at point-blank range, spray-and-pray could turn a bug into an acid stain against the far bulkhead. She'd done it before, and that had to be good enough for now.

She hit the hangar deck, hard, and burst into an all-out sprint, slamming the lock disengage to the armory door. The lock cycled from red to green, the door swung open, and ...

"Hello, little host," the runt hissed from just inside the armory entrance, her face twisted in a sinister smile as the drool pooled then dropped from her lips as she thought: _human flesh! yum!_

 _"Shit!"_ Corporal Torres gasped and stumbled back three steps, never taking her eyes off the bug, trying desperately to come up with a plan B now that didn't involve her getting torn to shreds.

Three steps back, right into One Arm's embrace who had stealthily followed her down the ladder, crawled along overhead fuel supply line and then dropped silently right behind her when she opened the armory door.

One Arm closed both her arms around the human, and lifted it up off the deck, spooned the human into her.

"Play-time's over," One Arm said sourly. "Let's go."

And she turned back to the ladders and leapt effortlessly up the two decks to the main deck.

 _"SHIT!"_ Corporal Torres screamed in anger and frustration. _"SHIT! SHIT! FUCK! FUCK! SHIT! FUCK! SHIIIIIIIIITTTT!"_

And then she burst into tears, screaming and sobbing at the top of her lungs, not caring about discipline anymore, not caring about anything. She lost – _Aw! boo-hoo!_ – but that didn't sting so much as that she had been set-up and played like a rookie in boot camp who hadn't even earned her first set of stripes. She was better than this.

Or maybe she wasn't. And that realization really, really hit her hard.

The runt, left at the entrance to the armory, called out up the ladder: "Hey, you're welcome for the help, huh?"

No answer. One Arm was already gone.

"Yeah," she said bitterly. "Yeah, great. Whatever." And she left, too, heading back to the bridge, knowing she had to fix the mess she made, and under Second's constant micromanagement.

 _Joy,_ the runt thought as she leapt up each set of ladders to the main deck.


	12. Waste

**Chapter Summary:** What happens when the bugs turn on each other? The right answer is to let the bugs kill each other off, then you clean up what's left. The wrong answer is to throw yourself into the middle of the fray. Guess which one Corporal Torres picked?

* * *

 _Sleep Cycle_

"I'm dying," Corporal Torres whispered into the bug's chest through cracked lips.

She hadn't had a bite to eat except bug-puke since she was revived from cryo, and not one drop of water or anything to sustain her. She'd been in combat with the bugs, lost, put into some kind of stasis for ... how long? a couple of days, maybe? and ...

And she was dying. She could feel it.

The bug, Stumpy, as Corporal Torres thought of it, didn't reply. It just wrapped her more tightly in its embrace in the slime flower hanging from the overhead and appeared to drift off to sleep, breathing deep, heavy, even breaths.

"I'm dying," Torres said again. It wasn't desperate, or sad, or helpless, her statement. It was an acknowledgement. She was dying of thirst, and there was no way she could make the bugs understand. She tried. They just didn't care.

 _Maybe it's best this way,_ Torres thought. She'd die, and that'd be it. She had tried to fight them. She lost, every time, and that hurt. But she'd fight until breath left her body, because surrender? treason?

 _Never!_ she thought. _Never._

Corporal Torres slept in the arms of the enemy.

...

 _Sleep Cycle transitioning to Tending Cycle_

One thing Corporal Torres hadn't done from her revival, besides get a drink, was to take a shit.

She was very painfully aware of this fact right now as she tried and failed to fight off the cramps. Her body was involuntarily spasming, and as much as she tried to tell it to stop, it just wouldn't listen to her.

She was up shit's creek, and, in a few seconds, this was going to become a big problem. Literally.

"Hey," she called softly, coughing, trying to clear her very dry throat, and get the bug's attention.

The bug didn't move.

"Hey, asshole!" she called more forcefully, "if you don't get me down from here in less that two seconds and to the head, you and I both are gonna be in a world of shit. I mean it!"

The bug heard her, all right, but Sleep Cycle wasn't over yet, and the damn human was stirring up a ruckus when all One Arm wanted to do was to sleep for just a few more blessed minutes. Was that too much to ask? Just a few more minutes of sleep?

Apparently that was too much to ask.

 _"Hey, you fuck!"_ Corporal Torres shouted into the cowl. _"I'm talking to y-nnnnaaaaah!"_

One Arm brought the crook of her good arm up to Corporal Torres' face and pressed, pushing her head into an exoskeletal vise. One Arm used her own body armor as backing. Corporal Torres' jaw was forced open as One Arm's metallic arm exerted just enough pressure _not_ to crack her skull open like a nut.

Torres screamed into this trap, but she couldn't speak. Not a blessed silence for One Arm, but maybe the thing would get the hint and shut up for the rest of the cycle when it figured that its attempts to communicate with One Arm was doing nothing except to piss her off.

One Arm won this battle, and Corporal Torres' body decided to inform her that she also lost another battle. Her sphincter spasmed, and she fired torpedoes one and two from her aft tube.

The stench that filled the cowl was unbearable, but the hardened excrement that turned to paste as it now connected Corporal Torres and One Arm in a way neither creature had anticipated nor desired? That was much worse.

One Arm was suddenly very awake, knowing for the first time what it felt to be shat-on by a human being. She howled in fury, whipped off the petals of the cowl, and let go of the hanging supports. Both One Arm and Corporal Torres fell, one, two, three meters to the deck. One Arm flung the human off her and bellowed in fury: _"What the actual fuck?"_

Torres didn't understand what the monster said, but she got the idea. Her sphincter, squeezed shut during the fall, let loose as she screamed right back: _"What da fuck did you fuckin' think would happen, keeping me away from necessaries for days, you God-damn piece of shit? I fuckin' tried to God-damn warn you, too, ass-fuck, so don't blame me for your fuck-up, motherfucker!"_

The two were squared off, but they weren't alone. The Queen, of course, in her domain, observed the exchange, but Second and the runt were on the mess deck, too, as they were finishing up their tending cycle. They stopped what they were doing, staring at the stand-off.

The Queen smirked and observed, "It seems Eighth has discovered that humans excrete their waste in solid form."

Second suddenly burst out laughing. "I was waiting to see when this would happen!" she exclaimed with glee. "Remember when Newt first shat all over you? _Hilarious!"_

And her laughter echoed throughout the mess deck.

The Queen wasn't amused. "It wasn't funny at the time."

But One Arm's reaction was entirely different. Already annoyed being burdened with tending to a human and not knowing why, and now this, to be smeared by it, then – insult upon injury – made a mockery in front of the whole Hive, it was more than she could bear. Something in her snapped, and she screamed a death knell: _"Diiiieeeeee!"_ and lunged straight at Second, the source of her shame.

Second was not caught unaware. As the Queen's personal guard, she was always vigilant, primarily to protect her Queen. Any attack on the Queen would have to get through her, and nothing would get through her. One Arm's skill was strategy, which her lunge lacked, and, as a fighter, she was no match for Second, blow for blow. Lacking both strategy and superior strength, her precipitated attack was simply suicide.

But not something to be dismissed out of hand. One Arm lunged. Second could have met her head-on, and simply pushed her back, and all the way across the length of the mess deck to crush her against the far bulkhead if she wanted to.

Second didn't do this. She parried One Arm's charge, and used her own lunge against her, redirecting her path away from the Queen, but against the nearer bulkhead, hard.

Second could use brute force if she wanted to, but here, she showed she had tactical skill in a fight as well, signaling to One Arm that she was more than just might and power, but had her own cunning, too.

Smashing into the bulkhead was a slap to the face for One Arm, the victor of many battles, and she refused to lose this one, no matter how heavily the odds were stacked against her. This was an honor fight – a fight to the death – and One Arm threw everything she had into it now. She would rather die than lose now.

She twisted, getting her weight under her against the bulkhead and launched herself at Second again. _"DIIIIEEEE!"_ she screamed.

Corporal Torres watched, aghast at the sudden explosion of violence. She should have been doing something: making a quick exit to escape and suit up for battle, or head to the bridge to override the block on the ship's self-destruct system, but this display was nothing she had seen before.

She had fought bugs multiple times, but up until now she never saw their unbridled ferocity. When the Xenomorphs attacked humans, it was also aimed at capturing them to use as hosts. Here, Second and One Arm had no such aim and their clash rocked the mess deck with a fiery display.

It was a display where One Arm was clearly outmatched. Second didn't have to exert her full strength to deflect and overpower her maimed opponent. In fact, she found this fight rather disappointing. Sadly, she, as a Queen's guard, was genetically designed to be superior any other drone of the Hive. One Arm should have gotten this message and given up, but with her knell, she was honor-bound to fight to the death.

Watching One Arm throwing herself against Second, again and again, was as funny and as stupid as watching a kitten attacking a lion. It really didn't make sense, but One Arm, her senses overwhelmed with shame and battle-lust, was beyond reason now.

At the same time, something snapped inside Corporal Torres, too. She remembered middle school. Her brother, her older brother, that is, was everything that she was not, that is to say: he was smart, and ... wimpy. Her dad was both proud that it looked like a Torres would finally be going to college, but at the same time her brother was constantly told to 'Be a man, son!' and was teased and bullied endlessly at school. One day three senior classmen had ganged up on her brother in the hallway between classes, and she had seen enough. _'You leave him alone!'_ she screamed as she launched herself at the bullies.

By the time the dust settled, it took three school security personnel to drag her off them. She had some cuts and some bruises, yes, but one boy had a concussion and the other two got off 'lightly': one with a broken collarbone, the other with a hairline rib fracture.

She got suspended, but her brother ...

... he killed himself.

Her father never forgave him for having his little sister stand up for him. _'You are not my son,'_ her father said. _'You God-damn puta! I don't ever wanna see you again!'_

And, after that, her father never forgave her for that, and never let her forget it.

She joined the United States Colonial Marines to prove something, to be accepted for who she was: a protector of the weak, a righter of wrongs. Strong. Independent. Something her father would never accept in her. Men were men, and women were never, ever Marines. He never talked to her again. Corporal Torres didn't care. She hated her father. Hated him.

And here she saw the big bug picking on the littler bug and all because she had shat on it, like it was its fault?

"You leave him alone!" she screamed and ran right toward the fight, mindless of her own safety and well-being. She'd taking on bigger marines; she'd taken on bugs. This bad-ass motherfucker was going _down!_ she thought grimly as the adrenaline coursed through her veins.

Just as Corporal Torres was launching herself toward the fray, the Queen, herself, decided to intervene. She had seen enough, and she could afford to lose neither Second nor One Arm to this bit of trivial foolishness unfolding before her.

"Second," she said, "end this."

So Second did.

Her long tail, tipped like a spear, lashed out through One Arm's midsection and penetrated the bulkhead behind her. One Arm's blood, what was left of it, trickled down her body and _hiss_ ed as it splattered onto deck below her, eating its way through the deck plating. One Arm was finally still.

 _"You BASTARD!"_ Torres screamed. She looped up using Second's arm as a fulcrum to propel herself, feet-first at her opponent. She slammed, full-force into what she thought was Second's weakest point: just under the neck.

 _"Pick on somebody your own size!"_ Torres screamed and tried to coil back to land yet another killing blow.

Torres tugged, but her foot stayed. Second was the Queen's guard, and whereas other Xenomorphs had smooth areas of exoskeleton here and there, Second had 'small' spiked barbs. Torres had impaled her foot. Several spikes were shoved and latched two inches into her heel.

"Ow?" she said when she realized what that tugging feeling was. The only reason she didn't tear off the bottom half of her foot was because Second, when she finished off One Arm's attack, finally became aware of the human on her, ... much like how you would be made aware of a mosquito biting you, annoying, and pretty much after the fact. Second took her freed arm and cradled the human, preventing its own weight from tearing away the fleshy bottom of its foot.

Humans are such delicate creatures!

But then the human did jerk, hard, ... planning another strike? Whatever it was doing, it didn't end up well. The heel tore and ripped into large, wet flaps of flesh. Corporal Torres was screaming in agony as blood jetted from the wound.

This is the tableau that greeted the Queen.

The Queen was not pleased.

"Second," she sighed heavily, "just what was your game-plan here?"

Second was nonplussed. "You said stop One Arm. I stopped her. As for the human, ..." Second held it around its neck, two of her talons supporting the bulk of its weight under its armpits as it bled copiously onto the deck plating. "... I mean, how was I to know that it would ..."

"Stop," the Queen said.

Second stopped.

"Let's review," the Queen said calmly. "You've eviscerated Eighth, and you've incapacitated the human. How does this help us to _grow_ the Hive? Or did I miss some vital point that's helpful to the Cause?"

Second was silent. She would have swished her tail to express her disquiet, but it, impaling both One Arm and the bulkhead behind her, didn't have that freedom of movement to express her emotion.

"I don't have time for this," the Queen growled. "You and the runt encase them."

The Queen was furious. This Bonding wasn't going anything like Newt's bonding to her. She wanted to observe it to completion so she could intervene if necessary, but, with One Arm critically wounded – _again! –_ how long would it be? Would the Bonding have to start from the beginning? What happened if the Bonding failed? There was only one other human; what if Bonding didn't work with that one, either?

The Queen was having the Tyrargo directed toward the Human's home world, a place where their might and technology was at its strongest. Three workers of the Hive and the Queen against all that? If the Xenomorphs didn't have a better plan than the last Hive, which was to do what they've always done, dig in and strike out, then the Queen and her workers would meet the exact same fate as befell the last Hive. All it took was one tactical nuclear missile to wipe them out entirely.

The Queen needed an insight into this species, or all was lost.

Corporal Torres' gurgling screams over the Queen's musings were eventually silenced as she was cradled into One Arm's hibernating embrace and One Arm's secondary mouth was shoved down the human's throat: the only breathing-tube she had as Second and the runt covered both in regurgitated mucus that quickly hardened into a tough, semi-solid resin.

The last thing Corporal Torres saw was that big bad-ass alien bug looking down at her as she was encased in slime.


End file.
